Cyndi's Stamping Blog

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 9

2011-12-10T01:13:00.002-06:00

We're already on Day 9. Actually since it's almost 1:30 a.m. on Day 10 . . . how did that happen? So here's a link to Tim Holtz' 9th tag in his 2011 12 Tags of Christmas. And here is my interpretation.
I will say that when I spent the day envisioning this tag before I made it, the background was a bright two-tone. But when it came time to put it together, I couldn't have anything compete with my bird, so I went monochromatic. This tag is all about that bird. I love him so much I might actually cry. (But since it's 1:30 in the morning, it could be exhaustion.) Here's a close-up of the little fellow:

I Xyroned a bunch of feathers onto a piece of chipboard, and then I die cut it and hoped for the best. I won't lie to you--I added the yellow feather to his head after it was die cut, and of course the beady eye, but other than that the feathers were randomly placed, although they were all facing the same direction on the chipboard.

This close-up also shows the bird cage. I used Shelly Hickox' "faux crazed porcelain" technique. You should check it out if you haven't already.

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 8

2011-12-09T09:25:00.004-06:00

So here it is December 9, and I'm just putting up the tag from yesterday! Here's a link to Tim's Day 8 tag; and here is my tag:

This tag had a horrible time being born. I think I started it five different times before I got the background looking like I wanted it.

The first thing I did to the tag was to stamp the train and the plume coming out of the top of the train (I thought it looked like Christmas steam) in VersaMark and clear emboss them. Then I applied the distress ink (in Tim's 2011 holiday colors) to the tag with the inking tool as he shows on his blog. After the tag was inked, I put a piece of copy paper over the tag, took a hot craft iron, and ironed the tag. The embossing powder was transferred to the copy paper, but the uncolored image was still left on the tag.

Then I stamped in a random brown color some of the stamps from this Oxford Impressions Steampunk Works plate. The bottom trim of the tag was stamped on black cardstock with a stamp from this Oxford Impressions Steampunk Elements plate and embossed with "Rustique Tin Can" embossing powder. I also embossed the big gear in that embossing powder. The other gears were embossed in different metallic embossing powders. In fact, sometimes while the embossing powder was still hot, I would sprinkle on an entirely different embossing powder color. Crazy!

For the stopwatch, I stamped the watch from Artistic Outpost's The Outpost plate and embossed with gold ink and cut it out. Yes, I even cut out the insides with small sharp scissors. Then I stamped Santa Clause from Fancy Pants' Blissful Season stamp set onto cream colored paper and framed it with the stop watch. I just so happened to have a facet that fit the watch perfectly!

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 7

2011-12-07T09:59:00.004-06:00

Here's a link to Tim Holtz' Day 7 Tag during this 12 Tags of Christmas challenge. We're over half way though. Here's my tag, which is truest to the original that I've done so far.

Mucho thanks to my friend Shelly for giving me a couple sheets of kraft glassine a while ago. I didn't have the Holly Branch die that he used, so I used the smaller holly leaves from the Festive Greenery die. Needless to say I had to use more than four leaves.

Also, I initially tried to draw some branches onto chipboard because I don't have the Holly Branch die, but then it occurred to me that I have actual trees in my yard and, therefore, actual sticks. So at 6 a.m. this morning I put on my shoes to go outside and was delighted to see that there was snow everywhere! I had to clean the snow off my stick so that I could paint some fake snow on there.

The stamp that I used is by Anna Griffin, and the really fun new technique I learned this morning is fraying the ends of lace. Yeah, the kraft glassine was okay, too, but I will probably use the frayed lace more often.

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 6

2011-12-06T21:38:00.002-06:00

You know the drill (unless this is your first visit to my blog), here's Tim's tag for Day 6, and here's mine:

This might be my favorite tag so far. I didn't have the metal foil tape that Tim used, so I Xyroned (can that really be a verb) some aluminum foil from the kitchen to glossy cardstock. It worked perfectly.

I ran this through a snowflake Cuttlebug folder then painted the whole thing with blue and black paint, then, when it was dry, I sanded the paint from the raised portions. Then, as instructed by Mr. Holtz, I started adding clear embossing powder. Every time I added a layer, it got prettier. After three layers of clear embossing powder, I added a layer of my own personal mix, which I call "Clear Blue EZ." Okay, it's just clear EP with blue glitter, but it was perfect for this tag. Here's just the background:

It was hard not to just leave it at that, but I added the die cut holly from Cheery Lynn Designs and added lots of clear embossing powder to that as well. Then I added the bird from the Stampin' Up set Language of Friendship (there's a punch that goes along with that stamp set--cool!). Of course, I couldn't not add layers of embossing powder to that as well. I cut the metal label with a Spellbinders Nestability die.

I am in love with this tag! And now we're half way done. Wonder what Tim has for us tomorrow.

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 5

2011-12-05T22:18:00.002-06:00

Yes, this is my very purple Day 5 tag in response to Tim Holtz' Day 5 tag. I know people have a hard time with this technique, but I found it worked very easily. This was a pretty quick tag to come together for me. I think it's because of the black ink I used, which is VersaFine. To finish I stamped on blue snowflakes from OnyxXpressions.

Now Tim forgot one very important step in his tag. He just placed the clear part of the tag on a white tag--no glitter at all! Crazy! I covered the entire white tag with lots of glitter first which is why the tree seems sparkly. The sky is sparkly, too. Everything is very, very sparkly on this tag. And also shiny from the plastic.

Okay, to be honest this tag is not my favorite; it's a little Disney Land for my taste. I can't wait to see what tomorrow's Tim Tag challenge is.

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 4

2011-12-05T21:53:00.003-06:00

It's Day 4 for the Tim Holtz' Christmas tag challenge, and here's a link for Tim's Day 4 tag. And here is my answer to it:
This tag took a very long time to make, the reason, my crackle medium is very slow drying. I cut the snowman out of an old (I think retired) snowman die by Spellbinders and the numbers are also from a Spellbinders die. There's actually a little more color in the snowman that is appearing on this photo.

The background, which I tried Tim's way and failed, is made by spraying several Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists and then spraying water to mix them on the tag. It's pretty shimmery in real life. Even though I couldn't get Tim's technique to work as well as mine, I do think I'll pick up some Picket Fence Distress Stain when I get a chance. My friend Shelly has a 10% off coupon code on her blog to Inspiration Emporium, so I'll probably use that.

The snowflake border, which I LOVE, is from Memory Box. Their dies are so cool and delicate.

I tried and tried to think of something to finish off this tag. To tell you the truth (and it might be blasphemous), I didn't really like the buttons Tim used on his tag. And I had a LOT of time to come up with an alternative (really, really slow drying time on the crackle medium). And then I remembered Anna Wight's crystal snowflakes. It's been long time since I made one, but they're really fun to make--especially if you like glitter all over your studio. See closeup below:

Cyndi

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 3

2011-12-03T17:17:00.009-06:00

It was really, really nice not to do this first thing in the morning. Tim's Tag today was all about how you can make multiple multi-color stamp images using Cut-N-Dry Felt. That's such a great idea, especially if you have Cut-N-Dry Felt. Or, if you don't care if the colors bleed into each other, you can use cleaning wipes. I went with the wipes because they're much cheaper and already live in my studio.

First lay out your craft mat that nothing sticks to, and I like to lay out some painters tape so I can make sure the stamp is positioned the same way every time. Then I put down four layers of wipes and stamped onto it with black StazOn. THEN I added drops of ink to the wipes so it was saturated all over with the colors I wanted. This makes a temporary personal multi-color ink pad.

Here are my first three copies. So much fun I made 21 identical copies. One for the tag and 20 for some quick Christmas cards.

But Tim also had a bonus technique today where you could use the same technique to do snowflake background cards. I loved this idea, but, of course, I tweaked it just a bit.

I stamped multi-color snowflakes, then ran it through the with a snowflake Cuttlebug folder. I brayered VersaMark over the raised areas and added some clear sparkly embossing powder. Then I sponged a little ink on the edges.

So here it is all together. The red berries are actually some red beads I sewed on. If you haven't yet made a "bow" with a brad, check out this technique, which is maybe the best thing I learned all fall. I don't know who originally came up with it, but kudos!

Above is the card that I'm making 20 of. It's a little simpler than the Tim Tag and uses nail head stickers for berries instead of beads.

Cyndi

12 Tags of Xmas - Day 2

2011-12-02T08:48:00.005-06:00

Okay, so here is Tim's tag for Day 2, and here is mine:

I made so many substitutions today. Tim had a "Seasonal Craft Resist Pad." and I had cardstock on which I made some areas "resisty" by stamping and embossing with clear embossing powder. Tim used "Distress Stain" and I used gesso. I will say that if I were to do my background again, I would do the resist part first before stamping in black, but it all kind of washed out with the gesso, so I guess it's not a big deal.

Tim sponged his holly with color. I started doing that, but felt after it was all put together that it needed more, so I covered it with Stickles. (Something had to balance the bottom border.) Tim used Perfect Pearls Mist, and I used Smooch Spritz.

Big difference--Tim used a deer die, while I had to stamp a pair of deer (Penny Black) on chipboard, cut the deer out, run them through the Xyron to make them sticky, put the fabric on the deer, and then cut the deer to the chipboard shape. That took a while. Instead of canvas, I have this fabric that looks just like tooled leather, and I'm totally in love with it, so I used that on the deer. (I also have that fabric in black, which you might be able to see behind the tag in the photo. The bottom trim on my tag is a little different as well. I used metal by Ten Second Studios for the red and also the green pine boughs (see yesterday's post for details on that).

The garlands around the deers' necks are made of the Ten Second Studio metal as well. I cut out this die from Cheery Lynn Designs out of the metal, clipped it up, and made my own wreath. Then I added Stickles.

I'm so glad tomorrow is Saturday and I don't have to get up at 5 a.m. to make the tag. Yay!

Cyndi

Tim's Tags - Day 1

2011-12-01T19:55:00.008-06:00

It's that time of year again! Time to participate in Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas. It's Tim's fifth year hosting this great inspirational event, and my third year to participate. Last year I didn't finish because my 25th Wedding Anniversary trip broke my momentum, but this year is just the 26th, so I can stay focused (sorry Honey). Here's Tim's Day 1 Tag. I was so excited about this challenge that I woke up early to get it finished before work. Okay, I didn't get it finished in the time alloted, but I did finally get it done, and here it is:

I know, I know, it doesn't look a thing like Tim's Tag, but that's the point. Tim provides the inspiration; the artist provides her or his own voice. My tag actually makes a social statement. We work and work all year long, day-in, day-out. Then Christmas comes along, and the gears freeze. Literally in this case.

The holly was die cut out of green cardstock with this Cherry Lynn Designs die, which I love. It's so delicate. I was going to use this Martha Stewart punch with a different green cardstock, but it had been so long since I had used the punch, I thought I would sharpen it first. In order to sharpen a punch, just punch through some foil or light metal. The light metal I had on hand was a scrap of green. WOW! It made some awesome winter folliage. Check out the detail:

I also used a Cuttlebug embossing folder and some Sizzix gear dies. The "Merry Christmas" is Anna Griffin, and Tiny Tim and Mr. Scrooge are by Stampin Up, colored with Copic markers.

This was so much fun, I can't wait for tomorrow!

Snow Day Art Project

2011-01-22T17:07:00.007-06:00

Is it just me? I buy cool things because I think it will make a cool art project, and then that cool thing just sits on a shelf and takes up space. This is a wood shelf that I bought at the dollar store over a year ago. I bought it not having a clue what I was going to do with it, but it had great "bones."

Yesterday it snowed and I stayed home from work. Time to make that wood shelf into art.

So I painted the shelf with my favorite acrylic paint--DecoArt Dazzling Metallics, Ellegant Finish, Espresso. It's basically brown with a nice shimmer. Then I lined the back of the shelf with some paper from GCD Studios.

I wanted the edges of the shelf to be really special, so I cut 1-inch wide strips out of some aluminum I had lying around (I guess at one time I thought it would make a cool art project), and used a Ten Seconds Studios kabuka mold in my Big Shot to emboss a really pretty design into the aluminum.

Because I wanted it to match the rest of the shelf perfectly, I painted the aluminum with the same DecoArt paint, and when it had dried, I sanded the top so that the silver would show through on the design. TIP: There is no need to paint the metal before you adhere it to the shelf. I had to repaint it after I had adhered it to the shelf with Humungo Killer Tape, due to the fact that I really burnished the metal onto the shelf. The process of burnishing also scrapes off tape. Lesson learned.

Anyway, in the end the edges turned out really good for a Snow Day Art Project!

The gears were cut out of some chipboard using a Sizzix Bigz die from the Tim Holtz Alterations collection. I wanted to try the Faux Tarnished Metal technique that my friend Shelly Hickox was kind enough to write a tutorial for. The only problem was that I appear to be out of clear UTEE. However, I have lots of bronze UTEE, so I used that. Somehow one of my gears even got pitted. Happy accident. That's distressing, baby.

So the gears might clue you in that I had a Steampunk theme in mind. My aforementioned friend Shelly recently did a tag of a Steampunk woman that was very cool, and I was going to do the same, BUT as I was looking at my stamp images, this kitty cat from Magenta caught my eye. I put a top hat on him from Oxford Impressions. Unfortunately, the hat was going the wrong way, so I stamped it with StazOn onto acetate and flipped it over.

And where did the feather in the hat come from? Well, you never know with a cat. Better to not ask questions.

And did you notice the monocle? If I were to do it again, I'd make it a little bigger, but I though it was a cute Steampunky touch. I bent some wire, set it over the cat's eye, and then filled the center with Crystal Effects glue.

I know that pieces of Art nowadays are supposed to say "Dream," "Create," or even "Hope." But I though "Meow" was much more appropriate. I printed it using a font called "Kelly" and put it in a Tim Holtz' Ornate Plate.

I wanted some more color, so I made some flowers out of Ten Seconds Studio art metal and these and these Spellbinders dies.

So here's my finished Snow Day Art Project piece. What do you think?

Cyndi

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 7

2010-12-07T23:36:00.004-06:00

Here is my tag for Day 7 of Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas challenge. My tag was inspired by this tag of Tim's.

I have to say the part I worked on the hardest was the background. Tim used this woodgrain texture fade embossing folder, and I didn't have one. So I coated my tag with four layers of clear UTEE and one layer of glittery embossing powder, loaded VersaMark onto a woodgrain background stamp, heated the tag so the EP was warm, and pressed the stamp into the surface of the tag. Nothing. Tried it again. Nothing. The problem was the surface of the tag was so big that I couldn't get the entire thing hot enough at one time to take an impression from a rubber stamp.

So Bob and I went to dinner instead. I happened to pick a restaurant close to Archivers and we just happened to stop by there after dinner so I could buy: 1) the woodgrain texture fade embossing folder; 2) some rock candy distress stickles; and 3) some more clear UTEE because I had just used up my last bit putting four layers onto a tag.

Can you believe that Archivers didn't have ANY of these items tonight. I had to go home and rethink my plan.

I took the tag and a craft sheet and my heat gun into the kitchen and turned the stove burner on low. I have one of those electric flat-top stoves so I figured it would heat pretty evenly. I went ahead and re-melted the embossing powder with the heat gun, and the heat from the stove was keeping it warm, and I pressed my stamp hard onto the tag. I took the whole thing, craft mat and all off the stove and peeled the rubber away from the tag. VOILA! It worked like a charm! I took the tag back to the stamp room and rubbed brown StazOn ink over the whole thing, and it looked very much like sparkly wood.

Later I covered up almost all of the background, but if you were to come to my house and peel everything off that tag, you would be impressed.

I also didn't have Tim Holtz sticky-backed canvas, but I did have some neutral-colored fabric. I used a Humungo Killer Tape Sheet to stick the fabric to some colored art metal. Then I colored the fabric with some Radiant Rain paint and Glimmer Mists and dried them with my heat gun. I cut the fabric/metal with three sizes of Spellbinders' dahlia dies. Just like Tim instructed, I cut the flowers and flipped them around. Because my flower petals are backed with metal, they hold their shape even better than Tim's flowers do. I totally LOVE my giant poinsettia!

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 6

2010-12-06T23:48:00.006-06:00

Here is my tag for Day 6, inspired by this Tag made by Tim Holtz. Again, lots of substitutions, but I really like this tag. It looks kind of elegant (except in this photo, I don't really like the reindeer. It's way more reindeer-y in real life.)

The deer I used was one of the shapes in a holiday grungeboard set I bought several years ago. I embossed the deer like Tim said to do, painted it purple to reflect the sky, and then ran a StazOn pad over it. I tried sponging distress ink on it first, but the StazOn worked much better for me.

I like the technique Tim used of stamping directly onto an embossing folder and then running it through a die cutter. I have done this before with great success. Unfortunately the only embossing folder I have that would have worked for this tag is a bamboo folder, and that's not very Christmas-y. So I heat embossed this tree from Stampin' Up's "Lovely as a Tree Set" (a perennial favorite of mine).

I first loaded the pine tree stamp with VersaMark and then put Garden Green and Always Artichoke ink onto it. I stamped it three times without reinking so that I could get some depth and make it look like there were several trees. (The third tree looks more like a ghost tree though.) Then I embossed with clear embossing powder.

The garland around the deer's neck started out gold and silver. I dyed it with alcohol reinkers. I really worked the ink into the garland with my fingers. I hope my fingers eventually return to being finger-colored.

Oh, I dyed the ribbon, too, but that was much easier. I pulled a ribbon between a distress ink pad and a sponge, and then I ironed it to heat set it.

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 5

2010-12-05T22:43:00.003-06:00

Today's tag is inspired by this tag made by Tim Holtz. The first thing I like about this tag is that it's not blue. I really loved the first four tags I made, but I was getting a little tired of using the same colors.

Tim had this incredible way of making enamel numbers using his Ideology "numerals" which is great, except I don't have any of those. My friend Shelly Hickox solved that problem by finding a font she liked, running off large versions on copy paper, taping the paper to soft art metal, and then cutting the

m out. I loved that idea, so I did that. Then Shelly combined white embossing powder and clear UTEE, so I did that too. Shelly came up with wonderful-looking numbers, and I did too. Shelly stopped there and added them to her tag. Not me, I decided to try and put holes in them and attach them to the tag with brads. BIG MISTAKE! All the embossing powder cracked and came off.

Alternatively, I had a metal "Believe" stashed away, and it seemed to fit with my Inkadinkado Santa Claus. So I got out my white embossing powder and clear UTEE and started over. It looked all white and like porcelain, but it didn't pop against the weathered

slice of sheet music, so I added a final layer of "red tinsel" embossing powder, and now it pops for me.

The flocking on the beard looks totally awesome! I am in love with Santa's facial hair!

One final note: Stickles take forever to dry. I realize some people were waiting all day for me to put this on my blog, but I couldn't assemble it until it had dried. I hope it was worth the wait.

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 4

2010-12-05T00:49:00.007-06:00

It's almost 1 a.m.! You would think I could get a tag finished earlier on a Saturday . . . and now it's Sunday! This will be a very short post.

I was really enjoying how all my tags coordinate with one another, but I am getting really tired of blue tags. This tag based on Tim Holtz' Day 4 tag, was really fun to do. I actually went to Archiver

s and bought the facets, but I had a hard time getting the alcohol inks to behave correctly on the back. See Tim's Steps 3 - 5. Instead I used an Azure StazOn pad, and it worked like a charm.

THE NEXT MORNING: Okay, now that I've had a good night's sleep, I feel much better, and I'm ready to give a few more details.

I started with some pretty blue background paper with "Seasons Greetings" printed all over it and added some funky Stampin' Up snowflakes embossed with white embossing powder heavily fortified with glitter. The ice skaters, "Post Card," and the label are also from Stampin' Up, and the skaters were colored (quickly, not well) with Copic markers.

The lace at the bottom didn't get added until this morning. I woke up and remembered that a year or so ago I bought ribbon with blue beads in it. It was perfect!

The gems, obviously, were placed in a free-form manner to compliment the tag.

Now I'm off to check out Tim's tag for today! Oh . . . and go to church. Places to go, deities to see . . .

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 3

2010-12-04T21:24:00.007-06:00

Well Mr. Tim Holtz put out another beautiful tag yesterday in his 12 Tags of Christmas challenge (he put out another today, too, but I haven't gotten to that one yet). Of course, I don't have Ranger studios at my home, so I had to substitute some of Tim's stuff for stuff in my poorly furnished studio.

The first thing I substituted was his red bird. You may notice that my bird looks somewhat like a butterfly. I tried using a bird punch, but the

bird punch I have is so small that two strips of tissue tape covered the whole thing. The tissue tape works really well. I tried to add Stickles to it after I had it cut out and colored, but the glitter didn't look evenly distributed and the glue wasn't so smooth. So I wiped it all off, dried it with my heat gun and put three coats of sparky embossing powder on it instead. It looks really pretty.

Since I was going with a

butterfly instead of a bird, I substituted the green tag with a blue tag, and then added flourishes instead of a tree. But it didn't look Christmasy at ALL, so I stamped my snowflakes with VersaMark and brushed on some silver Perfect Pearls.

I did make a flower out of the tissue tape, and then I sprayed it green and put a beaded centerpiece in the middle. The Santa Claus was stamped with a Fancy Pants stamp, colored with Copic markers, and then distressed with distress ink and

crumpling.

My one regret is that I didn't put more white paint around the edges. I think my acrylic paint may have been thinner than Tim's paint or my stamp had finer dots, but I would have liked to have had more "snow" around the sides.

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 2

2010-12-03T08:41:00.003-06:00

Well, just like yesterday, let me show you Tim Holtz' tag that inspired my tag. Pretty, huh? And as you can see, my tag is closer to Tim's today. Not dead-on, but closer.

The OnyxXpressions snowflakes were stamped first and embossed with clear embossing powder (EP). I used a coated white paper for this tag, and that's going to be important to know in a minute. I sponged some blue distress inks on the tag, then took a heated craft iron, put some copy paper over the tag, and ironed off the embossing powder from the snowflakes. The copy paper absorbed all of the EP like magic, leaving me with white snowflakes on a blue background, but it's all very smooth. You don't need a craft iron to do this technique--the one that you iron your clothes with will work fine.

I embossed the pine cone (Stampin Up) and the pine branches (Penny Black) and the "NOEL" (Anna Griffin) . . . yadda, yadda, yadda, not very interesting, whatever.

Here's the interesting thing: On the edges where there were no pine branches, I stamped some Fancy Pants flourishes with VersaFine sepia ink. I know, you can't see any brown flourishes. That's because I wiped them off and it took the distress ink off with it! I wish my tag had been a little larger to start with, because these "ghost flourishes" are very cool, and I am going to try to incorporate them into my next tag a little bigger, because this is definitely something I want to play with. I wonder whether the heat setting of the ink (from ironing off the clear EP from the snowflakes) contributed to this technique--something to explore.

The birds are punched with that really good Martha Stewart sparrow punch and embossed with three coats of pewter EP. Finally, I finished by adding some ribbon and red "nailhead" stickers. I was going to make some baubles and attach them to the ribbon like Tim had done, but I really undersized the tag and thought they would be overwhelming. Plus I wanted something red in the lower right-hand corner to balance the red ribbon, so I went with the nailheads instead of the baubles.

Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 1

2010-12-02T00:05:00.006-06:00

I don't know if any of you follow Tim Holtz, but every December he has a tag challenge. Click here to see his tag for Day 1.

My tag is somewhat different from Tim's. He uses a house die cut; I stamped a train station. Tim used distress ink on a craft sheet, spritzed it, and applied it to the tag and then dried it; I had choir practice tonight and didn't have time for anything that fancy so I just dry-sponged the ink onto the tag. Tim used a white picket fence die cut; I have it on good authority that the man in the foreground buys and sells stolen watches.

Get it . . . he's a "fence."

The train station and the fellow in front of it are from Artistic Outpost's Steampunk plate. The gears are from Oxford Impressions' Steampunk Elements plate. The snowflakes are from OnyxXpressions (they're my favorite snowflake stamps of all time). The watch face is a retired Stampin' Up stamp.

A Canvas Piece

2010-04-10T16:35:00.003-05:00

Shelby and I made something that's not a card! Its a canvas piece with a really cool tag. The technique I used for the tag is called Controlled Squish and you can find step-by-step details on Lin's blog. Now, Lin lives in England, and I didn't have access to all her products. I just used plain spackle and cheap acrylic paint. Instead of finishing with Precious Metal Paint, I rubbed with metallic rub-ons. I think it turned out pretty cool.

Tell how you stamped the words on the canvas.

First I painted the canvas with yellows, and a little blue, and some copper acrylic paint. Then I stamped the sentiment onto a big piece of tissue paper. The tissue paper was big enough to cover the entire canvas, even the sides. I painted the whole canvas with Mod Podge and put the tissue paper over it. Then I added another coat of Mod Podge. I added more paint everywhere, except over the words, and then I inked the edges with Ranger's new distress ink, Rusty Hinge.

While she was painting the canvas, I colored the butterfly with Copic markers, and made antennae out of wire. Then I shaped it's little wings and painted it with Mod Podge so it would stay that way.

The butterfly (moth?) is by OnyxXpressions, and the sentiment is from Penny Black.

Be very careful clicking the OnyxXpressions link.

What's wrong with the link? Is it broken?

Nope, it's just that you need to have lots of money set aside before you visit. Trust me on this.

It sounds like we might have some new rubber coming to the house!

Actually, I'm having it shipped to my new apartment!

What . . . NO . . . I have no idea what to say . . . What? . . . You're moving out? (I'm not getting new OnyxXpressions stamps?) . . . When did this happen? Why . . . didn't you say anything? When?

I didn't want to get you upset if it didn't work out. Let's get off the blog and we'll talk about it over a glass of wine. In the meantime, everyone else can reminisce about when I first came to live with you.

Man, I remember how you jammed all your belongings into my house.

Until next time,

If there is a next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Copic Storage

2010-03-25T12:22:00.006-05:00

Okay, so Shelby and I have started investing all our hard-earned money in Copic markers, and the issue of storage has come up. Since we like to take our Copics with us sometimes, we wanted our storage to be portable as well. Our need became painfully apparent last Friday night, didn't it, Shelby?

I believe I was doing you a favor by carrying them at all. And I thought we weren't going to talk about this. Focus on the project!

Back a few months ago when we only had 72 Copics, it was easy . . . keep them in the box they came in. But then Shelby got her income tax refund . . .

WoooHooooo!

. . . and bought us some more Copics. So I started looking at other people's websites for how they were storing their markers, and I really liked how Cheryl Horton was keeping hers. But I didn't have a caddy like hers, and I really like keeping them organized in the Copic boxes. So I bought an extra Copic storage box, took some chipboard, and made my own Copic caddy.

You're probably going to want to give them more detail on this, Cyndi.

Okay, Shelby, here goes (I wish I had taken photos while I was making it, but I didn't so try and visualize). I took some chipboard and cut strips to 12" X 2-7/8". These were used as spacers between the bottoms of the two Copic boxes (use as many as you need to make sure the boxes sit flat together and the tops can be put back on comfortably). I made sure everything was taped very securely with clear packing tape.

The I took a piece of chipboard and cut it to 12" wide X 9" high. I marked 3" from each end of the 12" top edge AND I marked 3" down from each of the top corners. I used these marks, a ruler, and my craft knife to remove the triangle from each side of the chipboard, thus giving me a good shape for the handle of the caddy.

Then she cut a rectangle for the finger hole.

After I covered the chipboard with paper, I taped the chipboard handle to one of the boxes very securely with packing tape, then I taped the other box to the first box so that the handle was in the middle. Then I put packing tape on the bottom so that the boxes are taped together very well. Then I covered the bottom of the Copic boxes with scrapbook paper to make it look like one box.

Then I put all the markers in, by number, according to each color family!

And we still have room for more markers!

So Friday I was at my church's stamping/scrapbooking event, and Shelby had put all the markers in an envelope box.

Where they fit quite nicely, but you couldn't pick out just the right colors conveniently.

I dig through the box to get just the right marker from the bottom, and I notice there's something on the markers! Do you want to tell the nice people what was on our Copic markers?

Butter.

Shelby had not only put stamping supplies in her bag, but a loaf of cinnamon bread to share with everyone and a stick of butter . . . and left it in the car all day.

You didn't see most of the mess the butter left in the bag. It was disgusting. I do feel really bad about that. I'll buy you some more Copics to make up for it.

You're on!

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Alice With Critters

2010-03-12T23:41:00.008-06:00

I think I may well be addicted to making triptychs. Y'all this is the easiest layout. I cut a piece of black cardstock to 11 X 5-1/2 and score it at 3-1/2 at each end. This leaves a 4-inch wide section in the middle. This Spellbinders dies works perfectly.

The stamps are from the new Alice Illustrated plate from Oxford Impressions. I thought these went together well because, obviously, they all have animals in them.

This is my background before I put the Alice images on. On the triptych I did two posts ago, I sponged distress ink onto cream colored cardstock. This time, I coated black cardstock with VersaMark ink and brushed on Perfect Pearls. Then I embossed and sanded. You can't tell it from this picture, but the embossed and sanded paper looks and feels like flocking in real life.

Until next time,

Cyndi

Birthday in Wonderland

2010-03-12T13:50:00.007-06:00

Here is a birthday card I made for a dear friend using an image from the Oxford Impressions' Illustrated Alice collection.

What does that say? "A very merry un-unbirthday"? Why can't you just say "Happy Birthday"?

Because, Shelby, that would not be funny or clever. Remember back to when we were children and watched the Disney version of the movie, and the Mad Hatter and the March Hare and the Dormous were singing when Alice first came upon them? They were singing about having a "Very Merry Unbirthday." But it really was Suzanne's birthday, so I wrote "A Very Merry Un-Unbirthday." Get it?

I didn't hear any singing about this in the "Alice in Wonderland" movie we just saw.

No, that was all about Johnny Depp.

Amen.

Until next time,

Cynd and Shelby

All About Balloons

2010-03-11T09:11:00.016-06:00

The first time I saw these new stamps from Artistic Outpost along with these new stamps from Artistic Outpost, I immediately knew I was going to have to do something like this:

The lines of the birdcage coordinated so perfectly with the lines of the balloons, I couldn't help myself. I thought to myself, "This would be perfect for my Party-Themed artwork for Artistic Outpost's March Referral Program!" Check it out!

Oh my gosh! Cyndi, you made something other than a card!

Hey, Shelby. Yes, I made a "triptych".

It's pretty trippy, alright. I didn't know you knew how to make anything but cards.

So not true, Shelby. I've made two or three things that weren't cards. Anyway, you may have seen this new cardstock out there called Coredinations which is designed to be embossed and then sanded to show a contrasting (but coordinating) color underneath.

We have a bunch of it at Archiver's, where I work. It's very popular.

Well, don't tell your corporate office, Shelby, but I made "Faux Coredinations--with a twist." I sponged a lot of ink onto cream colored cardstock, embossed in my Cuttlebug folder, and then sanded off the ink on the raised portions. The "twist" is I used more than one color of ink. But you could totally use just one color, or two colors for a more subtle look.

I have to admit, that is pretty gorgeous.

Thanks! That's high praise coming from you, Shelby. The beauty of this background is that it's really easy to do if you have the embossing equipment. And if I want black or another dark color to come through instead of white, I can start with dark cardstock and use acrylic paint.

Hey, I bet even I could do that!

You are not to touch the acrylic paint until I get home! I don't want a repeat of what happened last time. (Some people require supervision, but you, dear blog reader, should have no trouble with this technique at all.)

Check out some of the detail:

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Goofing Off?

2010-03-02T16:35:00.004-06:00

I think not!

Christmas Present

2009-12-20T22:04:00.006-06:00

Sometimes you don't truly get to know someone until you've lived with them for a time. I have been blessed in my life to, not only grow up with a . . . uh . . . an "interesting" sister, but to have her invade--no, "share living space" with me as an adult as well. I give Shelby a hard time, but we have truly grown closer this past year.

So in the spirit of extreme sisterhood, Shelby and I decided to get each other one combined present that we can both use. Something that will greatly enhance both our lives (I'm so glad she finally embraced stamping). I'm not going to say what we bought each other, but it rhymes with "toe-pick barkers."

Cyndi, you opened them!

Maybe.

Did you make that card with them?

Maybe.

It's only December 20! I can't believe you couldn't wait five days! I'll meet you in the stamp room in 10 minutes.

Later,

Cyndi and Shelby

P.S. Stamp Credit: Impression Obsession

Shelby Stamps

2009-12-17T22:35:00.010-06:00

That's right, boys and girls, I am a stamper now. I stamped this card all by myself with absolutely no help from my sister Cyndi. Okay, I did use her paper . . . and her stamps . . . and her gold paint pen . . . and her nailhead stickers . . . but the work is all mine.

And it's a good thing I did it, too, because this card is representative of 18 cards (three sets of six) that had to be made rather quickly. A friend ordered them from Cyndi as Christmas presents, but Cyndi hasn't had any stamping mojo since she got back from her cruise.

Hey, I was just thinking about making those monogram cards.

Yes, but these were ordered for Christmas 2009, so I thought I'd better lend a hand.

Okay, this is a shot of all the cards that are monogrammed with an S. I made S's, B's, and D's.

Shelby, I like how each set of notes is an assortment. I don't think I would have thought of that. Now each recipient can enjoy three different looks.

And what do you think about the new look of the blog?

Holy cow! You've been busy, Shelby.

Well, somebody had to do something. Do you realize we hadn't posted anything since September!

These are the cards in these great clear boxes that I found in the stamp room. Notice how the monogram on the band lines up with the monogram on the card? Pretty good, huh.

Hey, who gave you permission to use those boxes? I was saving them for a special project.

Those boxes are great! They're absolutely necessary when you're giving cards as a gift. Where'd you get them?

I got them from PaperTreyInk. And you can use the link, Shelby, to buy me some more boxes.

Until next time,

Shelby and Cyndi

Metal Collage--Impressive

2009-09-30T12:01:00.010-05:00

Picture this: I'm in my studio and I want to make a card for our mom because her birthday is coming up. I decide to make something awesome out of the new metal I got from Ten Seconds Studio. And I can't find the metal. Which is really strange because I just got it in the mail last week. Let me clarify. I find small pieces of the metal, but not the nice sheets of metal. What's going on???!!! It's causing me to over-punctuate!!!

I have to confess, I used your metal.

Shelby, that was a LOT of metal. What the h**l did you do with it?

We were out of aluminim foil, and I had to take some food to a shut-in. The good news is, it made a lovely presentation of my food. You should get us some more of that.

Never, NEVER use my pretty Ten Seconds metal for food again, because: 1) It costs way more than aluminum foil and should not be wasted on food; 2) I don't even know if it's non-toxic for food usage; and 3) it's MINE. There have to be some boundaries, Shelby. I'm so mad . . . I banish you from the blog for the rest of this episode. Oh, and 4) being hung over does not make someone a "shut-in."

Wait a . . .

No, you are out of here.

So anyway, I had these scraps of metal. What would happen, I thought to myself, if I put these scraps together in a collage? Can I come up with enough metal to cover the Big Daddy Mold No. 4 (also by Ten Seconds Studio and shown here).

So I cut some shapes and even got out my punches and cutting dies. I cut out three red hearts, two big red leaves, and three "Brrrr blue" birds.

What is "Brrrr blue"?

It's a fun name for a color of metal. Go away, Shelby! You're being punished.

I also punched out some oval shapes. When my collage looked the way I wanted it, I ran it and the mold through my Big Shot, and sanded the color off the metal. The metal stuck together beautifully during the sanding, even though I didn't use the best adhesive (I just used my tape gun).

I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out, and I hope my mom likes her card/fabulous artwork.

Until next time,

Cyndi

Encaustic Art with Artistic Outpost

2009-09-13T22:30:00.010-05:00

Do you love this or what? The stamp is from a new plate by Artistic Outpost, and the coloring technique is encaustic wax painting. I love to stamp, and I love to play with encaustic wax, but I don't usually do them at the same time. However, this stamp looked like it was going to lend itself perfectly to a little encaustic action.

First I stamped the image with Tuxedo Black Memento ink (I love this ink, by the way) onto glossy white cardstock. After heat setting the ink, I applied the sky and the ground with an encaustic painting iron, then I stippled yellow, green, and red wax onto the tree with a wire brush head attached to an detail stylus. These tools can be found here if you are interested. Also, if you are interested in this technique, check out John Vandebrooke's website. His tutorials are wonderful, and his demeanor makes you want to invite him to a dinner party.

So you basically "ironed" colored wax on top of the stamped image, is that right?

Correct, Shelby. I put colored wax all over the iron and smoothed the wax on.

How come the house is still white? Did you use one of your fancy "resist techniques"?

No. I just scraped the wax off the house with my fingernail. (But good for you for paying attention when I talk about "resist" techniques.) Then I drew the birds in with wax using the detail stylus with a drawing tip.

Okay, enough about you and your wax. There are people who tune into this blog to hear about me.

How's that project going?

The project you assigned me so I could work on my stamping technique?

Yeah.

I have finished the long and boring assignment, and I will never believe that you let me do it for you just so I could work on my technique. I know you were just using me for grunt work. People, she had me stamp 125, yes 125, Christmas card insides.

Wow! That turned out great, Shelby!

It's a verse and a flower thing in the corner. The art world is all a-buzz.

No, seriously. It turned out way better than I thought it would. I can't believe how straight you stamped the verse.

I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig.

Then you, my favorite sister, are at least half way to being a rubber stamp artist. You would not believe how many of my experienced stamping friends never use that fabulous tool. But you have already learned the value of the stamp placement device. You need never suffer the despair of having an inked image appear anywhere except where you want it. You are the master of your stamping destiny.

Great, can I make a card front now?

Well, I'm not sure you're quite ready for that yet. Maybe if you stamp the 125 matching envelopes . . .

Cyndi and Shelby

House of Dreams (and a Dream Job for Shelby)

2009-08-19T11:01:00.016-05:00

Look at this house and tell me that's not the cutest house ever! You wouldn't believe it but the plain paper mache house sat in my stamp room for months without creating inspiration. Then one day I got out my light green metallic paint, and this lovely version was completed within days.

Every light green metalic painted house I've ever seen has had that exact same effect on me.

Hey Shelby! What do you think of the house now that it's done?

It's whimsical, alright. What's with the little red tiles?

Glad you asked. As everyone may know, I am totally addicted to the little pearl stickers and the nailhead stickers. Well, when I was at Archivers last weekend I found these mosaic tiles and fell in love with them. I bricked the "walk" around the house and the chimney.

What's going on here (see picture above)?

Here you can see the wisteria on the side of the house and the ornamental iron door. Actually that's not the best photo of the door because there's too much detail of the copper fireplace inside. The top picture shows the door better. It was created in a very complicated process using black wire and a wire jig. The green wire wisteria vine actually helps to hold the whole think together.

How did you make the wisteria?

With flower soft. The window treatment is just a little piece I embossed and cut out using Ten Seconds Studio's Big Daddy #4 mold.

Okay, here's the detail of the roof from the front. I embossed metal using Ten Seconds Studio's Kabuka #2 embossing plate and the trim is Dresden foil that I got from Rock Candy Studios.

This is the roof at the back of the house.

Look! I even did the inside of the house. Note the copper fireplace. When the roof is back on the house, there is a red tile brick chimney that fits on top of the fireplace, but since it's attached to the roof part of the house box, you can only see it when you have the roof on and you look through the windows.

Or the door?

Correct. I made some really cute baseboard and chair rail out of tiny strips of white chipboard. The floor is just a piece of caramel cardstock with lines and dots drawn on it and then distressed with ink.

I see lines in the floor, but I don't see any dots.

Well, in real life, I added two "nails" on either side of where the planks join together.

That's a lot of detail.

Well I don't want my imaginary floor to come up.

This house looks better than the room you gave me to live in. I don't get the ornamental iron door. What's it protecting? Are tiny men going to break in and steal the firewood? There's nothing in this house.

Which is why it looks a lot neater than your overcrowded room.

Onto another topic, I need you to teach me how to stamp because . . . drumroll please . . . I have a new job!

Woohooo!!! Shelby that's fabulous! What are you going to be doing?

You are going to be so jealous. I got a job at Archivers scrapbook store.

NO, YOU DID NOT! I am so freaking jealous!

They needed someone to help customers in the store and teach stamping classes.

You don't stamp, Shelby. Why would they hire you to teach stamping?

They asked me if I knew how to stamp and I said, "I have thousands of stamps at home, and believe me, they are well used." So anyway . . . could you teach me?

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Sympathy Card

2009-06-24T14:52:00.003-05:00

Well, now that I have a giant card rack up at church all the time, I am feeling the pressure to actually put cards in it.

So this morning I got up an hour early so that I would be able to make a few sympathy cards before work. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but it was going to have to be quick and easy. Unlike some people, I try to be on time for work.

I know, I know. Can you believe they fired me the other day for coming in late?

Yes, Shelby, I can. You were almost two hours late. Waitresses cannot show up for the lunch rush at almost 1 p.m. But back to my story . . .

I sat down to peruse my latest Catch-Up issue of the Stampers Sampler . . .

The one you keep in the bathroom?

That's the one. I found the perfect card to CASE. It's on page 108 if anyone has her copy close by. I studied it really close, read the description to make sure it didn't have a tricky technique that would take me more than an hour to replicate. Then I happened to look at who the artist was who made it. The card was made by Shelly Hickox!!!

Your friend who lives in the country and doesn't throw anything away?

If I could make art out of refuse, I wouldn't throw anything away either. Anyhow, I just thought it was cool that out of a magazine full of stamped cards from the US and abroad, I would pick out my friend's card to CASE. Anyway the birds are by Penny Black, the words (both English and French) are by Stampin' Up!

I stamped the coordinating envelopes so she wouldn't be late.

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Faux Dry Embossing

2009-06-22T12:27:00.010-05:00

That's so strange. I just found this card by the computer, which was apparently going to be uploaded today, but I guess Cyndi didn't have time to scan it this morning. The weird thing about this card is that the embossed medallion isn't really embossed. I know this for a fact, because I touched it and was surprised that it is as smooth and flat as Oklahoma. Click on the picture so you can see it real good. You won't believe it!

Shelby, what are you doing with (1) my card and (2) my computer? And when did you start uploading stuff on your own?

Well, you're at work, so I assumed you weren't going to get this done today. I was just being helpful. I have to leave for work in a few minutes, so why don't you quickly tell us all how come that center medallion looks embossed, but it's not.

I guess you're talking about the red part and not the silver brad and it's cute filigree enhancement.

Naturally.

Let me start by telling you that this card was made for yesterday's Splitcoaststampers challenge where everyone was invited to scope out Christy S's gallery, pick a card we liked and change a few things. I picked out this card, which is fabulous, and since I just received the Stampin' Up! Circle Circus stamps, I CASED it.

The medallion is made using a technique called Faux Dry Embossing. First I stamped the image in white craft (pigment) ink, and then, using my Stamp-a-ma-jig, I moved the image over just slightly and stamped it in Rose Red, the same color as the cardstock. Actually, I discovered that it works better when I stamped it twice in Rose Red, holding the Stamp-a-ma-jig in the same place both times. It covered the white better.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm late for work now. I just took a new job as a waitress, and I'm pulling a lunch shift today.

Lunch shift! It's 12:40!

I know, I said I was late.

Until next time,

Shelby and Cyndi

Challenges, Challenges

2009-06-16T21:37:00.003-05:00

This card started as a response to a color challenge on Splitcoaststampers, to use Ruby Red, Baja Breeze, and Whisper White. I also wanted to play with some of the techniques in the Technique Junkies Newsletter.

Specifically, I wanted to know what could be done with the Bargello technique. I remember as a teenager doing some Bargello with yarn and plastic canvas, and I remembered that we did a lot of variations on the pattern.

I also got into a conversation today with the very talented Shelly Hickox about whether or not you could make your own alcohol ink out of . . . well, alcohol and ink. More about that later.

I just got this new Stampin' Up! set called Rustic Rooster. I would link it, but it's not even available yet except to the million and a half (intentional exaggeration) Stampin' Up! demonstrators out there. I thought this fine fellow would look good using the Clear Collage Technique, again from the Technique Junkies Newsletter. But I cheated. The rooster was colored with Ruby Red dye ink after it was covered with clear embossing powder and heated. "How did she do that?" you may ask your computer. "There's no way to get regular dye ink to stick to what amounts to a plastic surface! It will just bead up, smear all over the artwork, and wipe off! She's messing with the very laws of science and nature!!!!"

Woah! Settle down. It's okay; I just bent the laws of science and nature to suit my own purposes. As I hinted at earlier in the post, I added a little alcohol to the dye ink and painted it on with an empty water brush. It didn't bead up, and it didn't wipe off. It didn't even come off on the glass of my scanner (which is good because it would have been very hard to explain to my husband how the "cat" got red ink on the glass of the printer).

The other stamping was done on a sheet of acetate, because the Bargello, while very cool looking, is not a very smooth surface to stamp on. I put a little warm white acrylic paint on the backside of the acetate so that "Thinking of You" would show up against the background. It turned out to go pretty well with the Clear Collage part.

Cyndi

New Card Rack

2009-06-14T17:41:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I just happened to stop by my local scrapbooking and stamp store, Eclectica, where they were having a "garage sale." Among the treasurers for sale were two racks formerly designed to hold Transfer Titles. I bought one rack for $10 and brought it home.

My husband deftly cut off every other "pocket" on the rack and repainted it, I made some acetate pocket liners, and now it's a 30-pocket greeting card rack where I can sell cards at my church that support our mission project.

Not a bad investment.

Cyndi

Stencil Stamping

2009-06-12T09:06:00.002-05:00

For those of you who are subscribers to the Technique Junkies Newsletter, you might recognize the new technique "Stencil Stamping" on this pear. You will notice that this pear has a subtle pattern in it, that's from a brass stencil!

Wait a minute. The flower thingy is not part of the stamp?

Good morning, Shelby. I didn't realize you'd be up before noon today.

Your cat woke me up 10 minutes ago by sitting on my bladder. So, the pattern that's in the pear isn't a pattern that's in the stamp?

No, the stamp is from the Oxford Impressions plate Field Notes. The samples I've seen using the Stencil Stamping Technique use a solid stamp, but as you might remember, Shelby, the pear stamp I used is a photograph of a pear, thus giving me a natural highlight on the left side of the pear.

Oh yeah, I remember that stamp exactly. I have memorized every stamp you own. All 12,973 of them. How did you get the pattern onto the pear?

I don't think I'm allowed to tell. It's a Technique Junkies secret. Suffice it to say that it involves a stamp, a brass stencil, and craft ink.

That does not suffice at all. I don't think you know what "suffice" means.

Go back to bed, Shelby.

Until next time, happy stamping!

Cyndi and Shelby

Memorial Day Weekend Stamping Extravaganza

2009-05-26T11:36:00.019-05:00

Guess what I did this Memorial Day weekend? I stamped. I stamped a lot. A whole lot.

See, here's what happened. There's a group based in my church, Maanza a Leza, and we make jewelry, sell the jewelry, and use the money to support a village in Zambia. (I went to Zambia to meet them. They are the nicest people ever! They had an unrealistic desire to educate their children. Now that desire is being realized. Yeah!!!) This coming weekend we're going to sell our jewelry at the Memphis Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in Jackson, Tennessee. Anyway, a sideline to the jewelry is hand-stamped cards. But we didn't have any to sell, because I've been a slacker lately. I spent the three-day weekend catching up. Here's what I made:

I started off with the above card because I had made some that were very similar last weekend with my friends in Missouri. The layout is from an Anna Griffin advertisement that I loved and tore out of a magazine several years ago. (You don't have to keep the entire magazine. Just tear out what you like and toss the rest.) The stamps are Anna Griffin. I made 15 of these cards. My husband immediately bought the two packs of six because he has some thank-you writing to do. The cream background was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.

Okay, you might notice that this one looks REALLY similar. Instead of using cream cardstock for the background, however, I used my favorite Anna Griffin background paper, Cuttlebug-embossed it, and then sanded it. Again, the stamps are by Anna. I made 18 of these cards. My BFF Joyce bought six of them. (You're thinking I'm not going to have any to sell at General Conference, aren't you?)

Oh, and those wayward spots on the main images of the above cards are actually gunk that was on the glass of my scanner. I have since cleaned my scanner. I don't want you to think I'm a sloppy stamper!

The above card contains no stamping at all! The main image is embossed and sanded colored metal from Ten Seconds Studio, and behind that is the same embossing on cardstock and then inked. I only made 6 of these because I need to figure out how to be neater with the spackling. You have to spackle the back of the metal so it won't cave in during the mailing process, but I end up inadvertently getting it on the front, and then it dries, and it looks not so good.

So last week I had a discussion with Shelly Hickox (yes, the Shelly Hickox) about upcoming trends. She assured me that I cannot go wrong with an Indian/Persian theme. Okay, I'm using that as an excuse to buy fabulous Persian-themed paper from Basic Grey, and also an excuse to get out the Mehndi set from Sugarloaf Products (now Inque Boutique--but it was just Sugarloaf when I bought them--I used Inque Boutique for purposes of complying with the Angel Policy). The gold stripe across the middle is a piece of red-line tape covered with tiny gold beads. I made 12 of these.

Some more Basic Grey and some more from the Mehndi set. Oh yeah, and the sentiments on these two cards are Stampin' Up! I made 15 of these.

This is a blatant CASE from the most recent Take Ten issue of Stampers Sampler. I added the flower at the bottom, changed the sentiment, and you can't tell it from here, but the black background has been Cuttlebugged with Swiss Dots. All the stamps are from Verve. I made 12 of these.

Since we're supporting Africa, I had to make a couple of Africa cards. The giraffe is by I Brake for Stamps, and the verse is by PSX. Look real hard at the left of the stamp and you can tell it was Swiss Dot Cuttlebugged. I don't think you can see that it is also scored with a Score-It just to the right of the Swiss Dots. The scoring line gave me an excuse to have the card open not at the edge, but at the score line, which is different and kind of cool, although there is less writing area inside the card. I made 12 of these.

Okay, I've got to admit, I LOVE this one. You've got to love these running zebras by Beeswax. The tree is by I Brake for stamps, and the verse is from Stampin' Up! The paper is from Graphic 45, and I may have to buy stock in this paper company. What I love about the background papers is that they remind me of the chitenge cloth that the women in Zambia wear. And the sentiment definitely captures the spirit of my Zambian friends. I made 18 of these.

That, my friends, is a total of 108 cards made in one weekend! Whew!

Cyndi

Metal, Metal Everywhere

2009-05-11T09:33:00.004-05:00

This is a tag I made using some more of that metal from Ten Seconds Studio. The big tag is plum and the heart-shaped lock is pearl. The child carrying flowers is by Oxford Impressions, and the paper behind the kid is by Graphic 45. Oh, and the heart-shaped lock is from a Spellbinders die.

I colored the kid and learned that you can use Twinkling H2Os with a blending pen for very pretty pastel coloring. It's not as shiny and twinkly as using a water brush because you're not using as much of the product. However, as I was using fairly glossy paper (semi-gloss?), I didn't want to use a water brush.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty cute.

Cyndi

2009-05-10T18:48:00.003-05:00

The pastor of my church has started a discussion time following the worship service. It's a great idea, and it gave me an excuse to make a little note-taking book.

This book is 5" X 5" and incorporates soft colored metal (Periwinkle and Pearl) from Ten Seconds Studio. The trim strip on the left side is made by using a Kabuka mold, and the cross is an embossable die from Spellbinders. The paper is from Stampin' Up's Bella Bleu designer paper pack.

If you have never used the soft metal from Ten Seconds, I'll let you know that I really love it. After embossing, you gently run a sanding block over it, and the silvery metal is revealed only from the raised parts.

Since I've started working some with this metal, I have learned a very important tip. If you can emboss using a die cutting machine (mine's a Big Shot from Sizzix) rather than by hand, use the machine. It's unbelievably simpler than doing it by hand--faster with a perfect impression.

Cyndi

A Golfy Card

2009-04-30T09:40:00.004-05:00

So, it's one of my boss's birthday today, and he is an avid golfer. I usually make him a card that uses a picture of a golfer, or a golf bag, or a golf ball. This year I went a bit subtler.

I hate that the background came out so blurry in the scan. I guess that's the price one pays for using the big pop dots. The other thing you can't really see is that the brad has a "K" on it for his last name.

The tree image is a new stamp by Magenta, and is actually just a portion of the image. You can see the whole stamp by clicking here. It's embossed with brown embossing powder and then color was sponged on.

I could explain the background in detail, but Gina K explains it much better than I could in this tutorial. Basically, it's just your reinkers-on-a-moist-towelette technique that some of you may already be proficient in. It's nice because it allowed me to perfectly match the background to the foreground.

Are you planning to address the elephant in the room?

What elephant, Shelby?

The fact that you haven't posted anything since March 20! I'm sure all your blog fans were suffering from withdrawal.

Sorry about that. Life gets in the way, and I forget to blog.

Plus she's been working on her drumming.

That's true! I've been playing with Corky and Shelby in their jazz combo, "Shadows." It's really been a lot of fun, and I'm getting really good.

Don't quit your day job.

At least I have a day job. Somebody's got to support your lifestyle.

Cyndi and Shelby

Faux Flocking by Sanding

2009-03-20T08:54:00.010-05:00

My stamp club, River City Stampers, is having a "Demo Day" tomorrow where various die-cutting and embossing-with-die-cutter techniques will be taught. I am actually teaching one of the embossing techniques, but not this one.

This is one I came up with just because I have Cuttlebug on the brain.

Now before everyone leaves comments telling me that this is already a technique that some famous stamping goddess has published and is already all the rage in some stamping circles, I must say that I am quite sure I am not the only person to stumble across this.

Oh, stop being so diplomatic and just get on with it, Cyndi.

Good morning, Shelby! I didn't even know you were awake yet.

The technique . . .

Oh yeah. The cool background piece was made like this: I started with plain old white cardstock and brayered some ink onto it--something purple but lighter than Eggplant. Then I stamped a postage stamp background from River City Rubber Works in Elegant Eggplant ink. Then I ran it through the Big Shot in a Cuttlebug embossing folder. Then (and this is the cool part) I sanded the raised parts, leaving the Cuttlebug design white and really, really soft. In fact it feels JUST LIKE FLOCKING!

I am normally not too impressed with this stuff, but I have to admit the texture on this background is very nice. Wouldn't it be easier, however, to just use pre-printed background paper?

Maybe, but this way I got exactly the color I wanted to use, and I'm not sure the thinner paper would end up being so soft. But maybe it would. Why don't you try that today while I'm at work?

Corky and I are rehearsing and meeting a guy for lunch.

I forgot to alert our readers about this new development. As you may know, Corky and Shelby's band broke up some time ago because . . . well, because the band was not very good.

HEY!

But they have found a new genre. Jazz. It actually sounds way better than the rock cover band ever did. So far it's just Shelby on vocals and Corky on bass.

We're having lunch with a possible percussionist today.

You're adding drums? Won't that be a little overpowering?

Just someone to play a maraca or cymbal--something light and jazzy. And also someone who knows how to speak jazz so he can interpret for us. The only jazz-speak we know is from an old Andy Griffith episode.

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Anniversary Card for Dennis

2009-02-27T11:14:00.005-06:00

My friend Dennis will be married for six years in a couple weeks, and he asked me to make him an anniversary card to give to his wife. I really hope she likes it.

I've been doing some things recently that are French and Marie-Antoinettey, so I started off with by making the big white label shape and embossing it with Swiss dots. In order to make the "Swiss" dots "French" dots, I brayered black ink over top of them. Thanks to Mel McCarthy for this idea!

The owl and the swan are from the new Inkadinkado clear set Patterned Birds and Bugs. I am going to have so much fun with this set! They were embossed, cut out, and colored with Stampin' Up! markers.

Speaking of French things, have you checked out Oxford Impressions new Marie Antoinette plate? Fabulous! I understand Suzanne over at Oxford Impressions is going to be releasing another plate really soon that will complement this plate. I should probably make some of these polka-dotted labels for her!

Cyndi

2009-02-13T15:38:00.004-06:00

Well, here it is! This is what Shelby and I came up with for our challenge (see post below). Unfortunately, you can't see the color on two of the hearts, but in real life this is a pretty cool looking piece of art.

What happened to the color in the two dark hearts? This is much prettier in real life.

Well Shelby, it turns out that copper (any metal for that matter) doesn't scan real well.

Why don't you photograph it instead?

I would have done that, but last night when I tried to do so, my camera wouldn't work. I checked the batteries and . . . there were no batteries in the camera. Do you know anything about that?

Oh. I might have needed them for something else.

Okay, so this is how we made the card: Shelby punched the hearts out of the copper, then I ran them through the Big Shot in Cuttlebug embossing folders. I colored them with alcohol ink to get a base coat, and then used StazOn pads to color the embossed parts separately. Then I popped them with Pop Dots onto another sheet of copper which had been run through the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder. The sentiment is embossed in white. Finally I folded the corners.

The corner scrunching was my idea.

You, Shelby, are a creative genius.

Cyndi and Shelby

2009-02-10T11:29:00.002-06:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything in a long time.

I've been dieting and exercising though, and Shelby and I are looking better and better.

Instead of posting something I made, today I'm posting something I found in the Acacia Catalog. It's a piece of metal wall art, that I thought I would use as an inspiration piece.

I tell you what we'll do: I'll make a piece of artwork inspired by this wall art and post it to this blog. If you want to make a piece of artwork inspired by this, post it to your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comment section of my blog. Or, if you don't have a blog and you know me, email me your artwork and I'll be happy to post it on my blog.

I expect great things from my friend Becky who has recently purchased metal and tools from Ten Seconds Studio.

Cyndi

Friends 24-7

2009-01-23T10:03:00.004-06:00

I made this card with my new stamp set, Friends 24-7, and my new Stampin' Up! designer paper, Parisian Breeze. I added three brown stripes to the background paper with red-liner tape and Martha Stewart's brown glitter. The stripes are very sparkly in real life, but the card itself is not "too" sparkly, just the right amount for the dignified person I'm sending the card to.

Thanks for the glitter, Cyndi. Apparently it got not only on the card but on a couple of cats, who then decided to play on my bed.

I noticed you looked a little more sparkly than usual this morning, Shelby. Actually I think it becomes you.

Tell everybody how faithful we've been with our new walking regime.

Shelby and I are walking two miles six nights a week. I wear a heart rate monitor to make sure we're keeping our heart rates where we want them to be.

I don't really see how you wearing a heart-rate monitor tells you anything about my pulse.

Don't start. I let you wear it once and you refused to keep an eye on it. So now we have to walk according to my pulse. Anyway I think we're doing pretty good with our diet and exercise plan. The scales aren't moving as fast as I would like, but my pants are noticeably looser today.

Tell them the other thing about the heart-rate monitor.

What other thing?

When one's heart rate exceeds 85% of maximum the alarm goes off. On the last part of our walk last night Cyndi decided to see how high she could make the numbers go. She got it up to 87%. Your heart is not a toy, you know!

Shelby's just jealous because she can't keep up with me when I'm walking that fast.

Until later,

Cyndi and Shelby

Fun with Fairies

2009-01-15T16:11:00.010-06:00

Well, what do we have here?

Hey, Shelby. What you see to the left here is a cupcake fairy.

What in the . . . I don't even think I want to know.

No, it's pretty cool. You see, two big trends right now are fairies and cupcakes, and when you put them together . . . well you can see how cute that is. Plus, as you may know, 3D art is stepping way out of my comfort zone.

Is that what you were doing at your friend's house Tuesday night?

Yes, I went to Suzanne Melvin's house and we played with Oxford Impressions' new Fairy Sweets stamp plate. I actually MADE the cupcake out of a tart tin, air-dry clay, and flower soft. The fairy, as you can tell, is pretty glittery; and I think that's exactly what one would want in a cupcake fairy.

Now, this little fairy to my right is set in a tiny little flower pot with faux moss and flowers. She has flower soft on her dress and stickles on her wings.

So, Cyndi, can we expect more angel art from you?

Shelby, they're not angels. Angels have bird wings and fairies have insect wings. Please keep your mythological figures straight.

You know you're probably going to hear about that.

About what?

Calling angels mythological figures.

Well, sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between who's real and who isn't. Maybe angels are like that. Who knows what's real and what's not? Maybe fairies are real. Maybe angels are real. Maybe I'm real.

Maybe I'm real.

Maybe not.

Cyndi and Shelby

No Time to Stamp

2009-01-07T09:18:00.002-06:00

I regret to inform you that Cyndi has no time to stamp right now. She and I have commenced our New Year's diets and are busy scoping out healthy new recipes and scheduling time to exercise. Cyndi has actually done some exercise (I plan on walking with her tonight if it's not too cold). We are drinking lots of water and therefore spending lots of time in the loo.

Between the two of us, we plan to lose 100 pounds in 2009. I won't be so crass as to tell you how that's going to be allocated.

Shelby

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2009-01-01T12:23:00.003-06:00

So while many of you were out partying last night, I was home making this card from my new Oxford Impressions plate "Winter Snow". The backgrounds were made with the Faux Designer Paper technique from the Technique Junkies Newsletter. The little girl was stamped in black, but then lightly colored with chalks using a Q-tip.

Because of the glossiness of the paper and my camera's flash, the image of the girl didn't turn out as clear as I would like, but the girl is popped up on foam dots, and when I tried to scan the image (instead of photographing it), my backgrounds were blurry.

Although it is past noon, Shelby is not awake yet, but I did want to share some sad news about her. Her band was playing last night at a party, and Kelly, the wife of guitar player Chris, was there. It was the first time Kelly had heard the band play, and she told Chris that if he was going to be away from his family, staying out until all hours practicing with his band, he had to find a better band to play with.

This suited Kevin the drummer because he had also been getting a lot of static from his partner Ron.

So now Shelby and Corky are at loose ends band-wise. Perhaps they should find jobs or something.

Cyndi

Crystal Flower

2008-12-31T09:54:00.006-06:00

So how surprised was I yesterday when Shelby called me at work to tell me what colors were in the SplitcoastStampers color challenge yesterday? The colors in themselves are not very surprising (So Saffron, Bravo Burgundy, and Handsome Hunter), they are very wintry colors. The surprising thing to me was that Shelby knew where SplitcoastStampers was! Shelby reads Splitcoast?

Like it's really hard to find, Cyndi. I log onto your home computer, type an "S" into the Google bar, and "splitcoaststampers" magically appears.

So here's our card. The stamps are by Verve. I took Anna Wight's crystal snowflakes idea and made a flower. The flower parts are cut with a Spellbinders die and a Martha Stewart punch. Instead of covering the flower parts with glue and dipping them into glitter, I VersaMarked them and embossed them with glittery embossing powder.

What in the world did we ever do before Martha Stewart's fabulous leafy, branchy punch (the green part of the flower)? I love that punch so much--and her bird punch, too!

I can't get over your love of Martha Stewart. You live your life in such an anti-Martha, haphazard way.

I live my life in a haphazard way? Pot, kettle.

I'm supposed to live an ethereal sort of life. I'm Shelby.

When we were growing up in the Methodist church, every Sunday we would sing the Gloria Patri. You may know the words: "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be." My sister was sure they were singing "is now and ever Shelby," and she's lived her life that way ever since.

Somebody's got to do it.

Cyndi and Shelby

Stamp-a-Ma-Jig

2008-12-28T00:18:00.004-06:00

Cyndi, please tell all the blog readers about this card briefly because I've got something I need to get off my chest.

Okay, Shelby (said Cyndi very apprehensively not knowing what her sister was going to contribute today).

Just tell them without the commentary.

Today's card is based on a sketch I found at Card Positioning Systems. Cute sketch, huh? I used some retired Bali Breeze paper from Stampin' Up! and the stamp sets "Embrace Life" (flower) and "All Holidays" (thank you). Shelby helped me out by using the sewing machine. The flower was embossed with black on watercolor paper and colored with reinkers and a water brush.

Tell them about the "Thank You" part.

The "thank you" was embossed in white and then I used by Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to stamp the same sentiment in pumpkin ink just a tiny bit down and to the left.

THAT'S THE PART I WANT TO TALK ABOUT! I went with Corky to his brother Charlie's for Christmas, and when we got there, we found the dining room table covered with scrapbooking stuff and alphabet stamps. It turns out Charlie's wife Diane is big into scrapbooking (why on the dining room table right before Christmas I don't know, but I don't judge). She was working on a fairly cute page, when I just HAPPENED to mention that if she used one of those Stamp-a-Ma-Jigs she could make the letters straight. She told me (kind of snarkily) that she had a Stamp-a-Ma-Jig, but it was too much trouble to use and she liked that the letters weren't straight.

For those of you who are lost about the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig, it's a simple stamp image positioning device that I use all the time to make sure my images are straight on my cards. Here's a YouTube video on it. Of course, that is not imporant to everyone, Shelby.

I understand that "straight" and "level" isn't everyone's goal, so I told her that she could get the letters uniformly uneven if she used the stupid thing. I mean, I've seen Cyndi use it a million times, and it can't be that difficult.

Is that why you spent most of Christmas in the RV? Because of scrapbooking differences? Shelby, everyone has different taste. Just because I like making everything even . . .

Wait a minute. I just opened this card you made.

The inside of the card is not what we focus on for this blog, Shelby.

You stamped the inside crooked.

Shelby . . .

Badly crooked. Why didn't you use the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig on the inside?

I would have, but it was easier to . . .

I give up!

Shelby and Cyndi

Christmas Eve Sketch Challenge

2008-12-24T17:21:00.009-06:00

Here is a copy of the Sketch Challenge today at SplitcoastStampers. I thought I should probably post the sketch as well as the card I made because it's really hard to tell from my card what the sketch is. It's my loosly rendered interpretation.

Since this sketch gave me the opportunity to use a larger stamp than I usually use, I thought immediately of of this lovely image from OnyxXpressions. Since it is an image of Mt. Fugi, I also started bracing myself to part with a little of my stash of washi paper.

So I layered the main image, both pieces of washi paper, and the red base on black cardstock to give it a little definition. Instead of layering exactly like in the sketch, I decided to have my layers be more like a fan or a hand of cards. I lined up my three layers and poked a hole in the bottom left-hand corner. Then I added a formerly-silver brad.

With all the Asian, the silver brad really needed to be gold, so I carefully held it with tweezers, heated it with my heat gun, then dipped the hot brad into gold embossing powder. I heated it again so that the details in the brad would come out again.

After stamping the "Thanks" in the bottom corner, I added some black shiny bead-like stickers in the other corners.

On another topic entirely, if you like Oxford Impressions stamps, you need to visit Suzanne's blog. You will not be sorry to see what's over there right now.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Cyndi

Warm Wishes--Color Challenge

2008-12-23T20:26:00.003-06:00

I only worked half a day today, so I had lots of time to do this wonderful Color Challenge at SplitcoastStampers. Today's colors are So Saffron, Cameo Coral, and Orchid Opulence. Initially I was going to make a big flowery creation, but I went with a Zindorf-inspired creation instead.

The sparkly trees are not showing up, but in real life, the sparkle as if an ice storm had hit the night before.

The bunny and the bird are Martha Stewart punches. The bunny is utilitarian as he covers up an unfortunate smudge in the snow. The bird just balances the bunny, but I think they add a lot to the card.

Thanks for looking.

Cyndi

Faux Silk with a Pop and a Twist

2008-12-23T08:34:00.004-06:00

I am so pleased that I was able to get on SplitcoastStampers yesterday. For some reason, I've been busy doing other stuff.

Anyway yesterday's technique is called "Faux Silk with a Pop," and then I added my own Twist. I thought this tag image from Inkadinkado would work perfectly, and since I have not sent my mother a Christmas card yet (I know, but she's at my brother's and won't know when the Christmas mail arrived--unless she reads this blog), this is a very timely card.

If you have not tried Faux Silk you should give it a shot--it's pretty easy and not too messy. Here's how I did it:

I stamped the tag onto tissue paper, colored the holly leaves with Prismacolor pencils, cut it out leaving about 3/4 of an inch around the stamped image, and wadded the whole thing into a ball. Then I rolled it around between my palms like I was rolling out candy before dipping it into chocolate (oh, that's what I've been busy with). I cut a tag just a little bit smaller than the stamp's tag shape. That's because I didn't want to have to stretch the tissue paper out all the way. The beauty of the faux silk is in the wrinkles.

Here's the "Twist" I added. I brayered on inks from a spectrum pad onto the plain cardstock tag. I guess I made sort of a tie-dyed faux silk.

I covered the tag with a glue stick, unwadded my tissue paper, and stuck them together, carefully preserving little wrinkles in the tissue paper and folding the excess tissue paper around to the back. I even mitered my corners. (You can use any kind of adhesive for this, although I prefer dry adhesive. Although if you use wet adhesive you can put glitter all over it before it dries. I guess it's whatever you're in the mood for.) Then I sewed along the parameter of the tag.

I made two more tag shapes out of pink and green cardstock, stamped a very subtle "linen" background and then the filigree which was embossed with gold, and sponged and stitched them as well. On the dark green card base, I stamped the linen background with VersaMark and embossed with clear embossing powder. It is very "unsubtle" (if that's a word).

Okay the "Pop" of this technique is the Mona Lisa image from the tag collage that was stamped onto a piece of white cardstock, colored lightly with Prismacolors, and then adhered to the top of the faux silk.

As finishing touches I added red bead berries, some more holly in the top, left-hand corner, and crocheted some cord for the top of the tag. Then I tied that into a bow because it was pretty. I have to tell you I have never crocheted the cord or tied the ribbons of a tag into a bow before, but I really like the way it came out and will be doing this again.

Thanks for reading and have a fabulous Christmas.

I'm enjoying a quiet house because Shelby, Corky, and his dog took the RV to Corky's brother's house for the holidays. Talk about Silent Nights.

Cyndi

Overdue Tim Tags

2008-12-19T22:29:00.008-06:00

I cannot believe I waited a whole week before uploading my last two Tim Holtz tags. Bad stamper!

Anyway, this one is based on Tim's Tag No. 10. My reindeer is grungeboard that I embossed a paisley background onto and then painted with green Twinkling H2Os. The flowers (Fancy Pants) and the "Happy Holidays" (Inkadinkado) were embossed with clear embossing powder, and then the tag sprayed with Glimmer Mist. I was planning on ironing the embossing powder off, but it looked pretty good as it was, so I left it.

The flower that you see was inspired by Anna Wight's crystal snowflakes. Here's her tutorial. I didn't do the technique justice, but it's only my first attempt.

No I didn't put a crown on the deer. I don't understand putting crowns and angels on animals and children. The whole concept just confuses me.

Now, the image to the right is inspired by Tim's Tag No. 12. I didn't have Tim's clock stuff, but I did have a partial clock stamp by Stampin' Up! which I stamped on the tag and then again on acetate. I added a giant decorative brad to hold the acetate clock onto the tag.

Santa is by Artistic Outpost (Snowy Woods plate), and those snowflakes are, again, from OnyxXpressions. I stamped them in black, but then wanted them to pop more, so I used my Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to line them up and embossed in white, using the original black stamping as a shadow.

I really enjoyed making these tags. Thanks, Tim, for all the inspiration!

Cyndi

Tim's Tag No. 11

2008-12-11T19:23:00.007-06:00

I know I've skipped Tim's No. 10, but I'll get back to that, I promise. I had to share with you about the little tags that are on the big tag. It looks like etched glass.

The tag that Tim Holtz made today is found here. It's a beautiful tag, but it uses stuff I don't have, namely fragment charms, which he sanded, stamped, and embossed. So I was looking at his tag on line when my sister Shelby came up behind me. Tell them what you said, Shelby.

I said, "Great! Tim's copying you. Now he's using Shrinky Dinks."

Tim, of course, wasn't using Shrinky Dinks, but the look was very similar, and so I took the leftover shrink plastic I used in Tag No. 9, cut tag shapes out of it, and shrunk them down to size with my heat gun. The shrink plastic I have is already roughed up on one side, and I didn't know if this technique would work. I stamped my snowflakes on the rough side of the tiny tags, poured on the clear embossing powder, heated them up again, and was amazed to see a snowflake appear! And it's all because of Shelby and her brilliant idea!

I'm just glad Corky and I didn't use all the shrink plastic last night.

You used my shrink plastic?

Corky was making tiny little guitar picks as gag gifts.

That shouldn't have used up much of the Shrinky Dinks, Shelby.

He made a lot of them.

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Tim's Tag No. 9

2008-12-09T22:09:00.003-06:00

As you may know, I'm following Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas Challenge, and here is Tag No. 9 a la Tim Holtz.

I used Artistic Outpost's Snowy Woods plate extensively for this tag. In fact everything but the deer (Penny Black) and the "Post Card" (Stampin' Up!) are from the Snowy Woods plate. Oh and there are also words behind all the sponged on color, but I kept on sponging on color until you can't see them.

Now you may notice that on the tag that Tim created, he used a key and a lock. I figured that since Santa doesn't have keys (hello, there is no lock on my chimney), I would add the deer and the sled. These were fun to make. They're Shrinky Dinks. I remember when I was a kid my mom and Shelby and I would color Shrinky Dinks then bake them in the oven. That's before we found out about heat guns.

Cyndi

Tim's Tag No. 8

2008-12-09T09:36:00.007-06:00

Well, I felt kind of bad that I told my friend Shelly I was going to use a Diet Pepsi can for snowflakes the other day, and then I didn't. Therefore, I made the ornament on this tag out of an aluminum can in an attempt to redeem myself.

I get it--"redeem" "aluminum can". I'm going back to bed now.

Thanks, Shelby, for explaining my little joke for me.

It was a mighty little joke.

Anyway, I cut the can open, cut the ornament out of the can, and then put it in a cuttlebug embossing folder and embossed it. I then stickled it a lot and set it aside to dry.

The rest of the tag is similar to Tim Holtz' Tag No. 8, except for the stamps used. The background (which is so subtle it doesn't even show up in this photo) is a flanel background from Stampin' Up! The Season's Greetings is from Inkadinkado. The snowflakes are from OnyxXpressions, and the flourishes are from Fancy Pants.

Cyndi and Shelby

Tim's Tag No. 7

2008-12-08T20:40:00.004-06:00

So yesterday Tim posted his Tag No. 7. This tag of mine is closer to Tim's tag than any tag I've done so far. One of the reasons is that Saturday I bought the seasonal grungeboard that he's been using. But our tags aren't exactly the same. Here's how they differ.

1) I forgot to stamp snowflakes on the tag before assembling it. Whoops!

2) My snowman's scarf is way cuter.

3) I didn't have Christmas beads, but I had white beads that I dyed with the alcohol inks and strung with gold spacers.

4) My snowman presents his beads in a more sophistocated manner.

5) My snowman's nose is shorter and more in proportion to his tiny, little head (why is the head on this snowman so tiny?)

6) While Tim made his snow out of clear UTEE, white UTEE, glitter, perfect pearls, and glossy accents, I made my snow out of clear UTEE, white flocking, glitter, PearlEx, and crystal effects. My snow is very, very fluffy looking thanks to all the flocking, but still pretty icy because of the glitter.

I really enjoyed making the snow. That's a fun technique. I didn't use gloves either and had no trouble washing the mess off my hands. (Although while dying the red beads there was the incident with the red alcohol ink and the brand new skirt. I came out of my skirt really fast, washed it in the nearest sink, and all the ink came out, but it was really dramatic there for a minute.)

Cyndi

Tim's Tag No. 6

2008-12-07T09:02:00.004-06:00

I'm still working on Tim Holtz' Christmas tag challenge and having a ball. Here is the link to his Tag No. 6. It's different than his other tags--old fashioned and sweet. Here's how I did it.

While I was waiting for the alcohol ink to dry in the pallet, I made the background. First I did it like Tim suggested, but I thought it was too light for my taste, so I put two colors of blue reinkers on the craft sheet and spritzed it. There was a LOT of ink and water on the craft sheet so I switched my cardstock tag to a piece of watercolor paper. Inky water still dripped off the tag when I picked it up, but the blues combined and swired so beautifully. The background was fabulous when I took the heat gun to it.

If you are examining the tag to find the beautifully swirled background, I am sorry to tell you that something terrible happened to it. I stamped the green branches (still looking good) then stamped the sheet music. Whoops! I accidently stamped the music upside down. If only I hadn't already cut the corners at the top I would have just flipped the tag over, but no, the tag had been trimmed. So I used my soft filter technique and lightened the whole thing. Then it was too light, so I added dark blue to contrast with the "snow" that was going to be on the outside of the tag. It worked well as a camaflage, but my beautiful background is now no where to be found on the tag.

On a piece of acetate, I stamped the Christmasy branch and the little birds from Stampin' Up!'s retired Feathered Hope set. I also found out the reason Tim suggested outlining the tag shape onto the acetate. Acetate is very hard to see on a work station (especially a cluttered one). I had to outline it, just to see where I was supposed to stamp! Then I turned the acetate over and colored the little birds with the dried reinkers activated by a water brush full of blending solution. After that I added white paint as directed by Tim, but I added it with a sponge, which I thought gave kind of a frosty look to it.

The letters were cut out of a glitter sheet and colored with alcohol inks. I punched snowflakes out of a Diet Pepsi can, just like my friend Shelly did, but they were too big. I was afraid for my petit birds to get hit with such large flakes. I remembered I had these cute little snowflakes left over from two Christmases ago, so I used those. Sorry, Shelly. I broke with the program.

When I was done, I noticed there was a lack of Stickles, so I remedied that by putting Stickles glitter glue around the whole tag, giving it a very icy feel.

Cyndi

Tim's Tag No. 5--With Butterfly

2008-12-06T19:17:00.005-06:00

This is my version of Tim Holtz' Tag No. 5. He used his fabulous grungeboard reindeer. Unfortunately for me, I did not own that lovely creature, so I substituted a fabulous heavily flourished bird from Sugarloaf. Okay . . . you have probably noticed by now that that bird does not appear on the tag. It turns out you can have too much flourish. Who knew?

Instead of using the bird, I stamped the butterfly on chipboard, embossed it, painted it red, then lightly touched the embossed snowflakes with a white chalk ink pad. I used some red wire for its antennae and put red beads on the ends.

The background is really cool, and I never would have thought of doing this if not for Mr. Holtz. First I painted the whole tag with black acrylic paint, then embossed the swirly elements (Fancy Pants) and the script (retired Stampin' Up!) with black embossing powder. Then you paint the whole thing green with acrylic paint. As soon as it's dry on the tag, but before it's dry on the embossed parts, wipe the whole thing with a wet paper towel. The paint comes right off the embossing and stays pretty well on the rest.

I painted the grungeboard flourish with a gold paint pen, painted the felt snowflakes with stickles and let them dry, and added lace at the bottom. It's hard to see but the lace then got further embellished with pearl stickers, as did the snowflakes (can't have too many pearl stickers).

Cyndi

Tim Holtz Tag 4--Sort Of

2008-12-05T10:39:00.006-06:00

Here is Tim's Tag for Day 4. As you can see, my tag looks nothing in the world like his tag. It does include a Santa Claus (from my Fancy Pants Blissful Season set), but it's not a photograph of me and Santa. And it includes the number 25, but mine are die cut and colored with a silver paint pen. Mine is also tag shaped and contains quit a bit of metal.

Actually I was more inspired by my friend Robyn Sharp's copper piece that she did a couple days' ago. I used the Faux Designer Paper technique on the copper (no it's not pink card stock--it's copper) using stamps from Inkadinkado and OnyxXpressions. Then I stamped a portion of a tree from Penny Black in the upper right-hand corner and hung this great ornament from Inkadinkado (also cut out of copper). The ornament was painted with blue alcohol inks before I stamped it, but it's really hard to tell that from the scan. And of course, I had to bling it up a little with Stickles and beads.

The Santa part is not printed on cloth like Tim's is, so to make up for it, I stamped a linen background stamp over it in VersaMark and embossed with clear. You can't see it, but it's textured in real life.

Lastly, I finished with Dresden Foil trim which I got at Rock Candy Studios. This is good stuff and very addictive.

Cyndi

Soft Filter

2008-12-04T16:02:00.004-06:00

The background paper for this card is some Anna Griffin paper that is several years old. I have gobs of it. Every time I saw it, I bought it.

In this month's Stamp & Scrap there is a technique called Soft Filter that is so cool, and I knew I had to use it on this paper. It's so easy. Basically you take white craft ink and sponge it over your background, making . . . well, a soft filter. It looks like I put a piece of vellum over the background paper, but I just sponged on the white and then stamped on French script. I sponged more at the top than the bottom for contrast.

The main rose image is from the Abundant Joy set from Stampin' Up! I watercolored it with reinkers and a blender pen on watercolor paper. Now that my paper is subdued, it goes together perfectly!

Cyndi

Tags of Christmas -- Tags 1 and 3

2008-12-04T08:59:00.007-06:00

In case you didn't tune in yesterday, this is for the 12 Tags of Christmas challenge hosted by Tim Holtz. This is my version of his Tag 1. Instead of masking (which I tried yesterday, but I hated how that tag turned out), I used the Faux Designer Paper from the Technique Junkies Newsletter. The flourish is from Fancy Pants' Blissful Season stamp set and the snowflakes are from OnyxXpressions.

I have to tell you that I had never inked those snowflakes before, and when the ink from the stamp kissed the paper, angel voices were heard throughout the stamp room. I know it's hard to believe I would have that response to a snowflake stamp, but I am in love.

"Merry" was die cut from a Spellbinders alphabet set and glittered. The deer is from Flourishes (gotta love those festive antlers), and the red snowflake is by Stampin' Up enhanced with Stickles.

This second tag is Tim's Tag 3. I do not have all the stuff Tim has so I had to make do with what I had on hand. Instead of a glossy accent, I used clear ultra thick embossing enamel to spotlight my tag (after coloring with markers and a blender pen), and instead of a Philosophy tag, I punched out a circle and put a lot of layers of gold embossing powder on that and stamped in a snowflake. The spotlight needed a little enhancing, so I edged it with a gold paint pen.

And what time did you complete this project?

Hey, Shelby! As you know I was up bright and early this morning, inspired by this great challenge.

The next time you're inspired before 8 a.m., please stamp something quieter. Let's have a new rule: No heat embossing before 8:30.

Or you could get a job and rent your own place. Seriously though, Shelby, you are more than welcome to join me in the studio instead of sleeping through the creativity.

Until next time,

Cyndi and Shelby

Tags of Christmas--Tag 2

2008-12-02T23:58:00.006-06:00

Tim Holtz is hosting his 12 Tags of Christmas challenge over on his blog. This is my version of Tag No. 2. It took a couple of tries for me to get this technique to come out right, but I think I nailed it.

The stamps are from the "A Wish For Peace" set by Stampin' Up! It may not show up on your monitor, but the snow on the trees and the church are glittered. I put a light in the church with a yellow Zig chalk writer.

You may notice that this is Tag No. 2, yet there is no Tag No. 1 posted to my blog. I actually worked on both tags last night, but Tag No. 1 just would not come together. I'm going to take another pass at it tonight if I get the chance.

Cyndi

Photo Stamping

2008-11-23T15:32:00.003-06:00

"Wow!" you are probably thinking to yourself (maybe even saying it outloud to your computer monitor) "How in the world did Cyndi make such great-looking snow?" Well, I'll tell you . . . last summer I took a photograph of a cloudy sky, and then last night I stamped on the photograph using black StazOn ink. Pretty cool, huh? It even looks like Santa is stepping out of the shadows. I really liked how this came out.

The only thing I am adding today is that I didn't do the sewing on the card, Cyndi did it. If I had done it, it would have been straight.

I think it just adds to the charm. The stamp is from Artistic Outpost's Snowy Woods plate (see previous post).

Until next time,
Cyndi and Shelby

Renaissance Paper

2008-11-21T21:43:00.015-06:00

Check out the cool background on this card. It's called Renaissance Paper and we made it at my stamp club this past Saturday. We took large pieces of paper bag, soaked them in water and white vinegar, and then sponged with acrylic paint, including metallic acrylic paint. It looks so cool in person.

No, it looks bumpy in person. As I'm looking at this card the wadded-up-paper-bag part isn't lying flat at all. Couldn't you have glued it down better?

Shelby's right in that it is not lying flat. But what Shelby doesn't realize is that parts of the background are glued flat to the black base and other parts are held aloft by Pop Dots--the big Pop Dots. I wanted it to look kind of like a sculpture.

Oh, I see it now. It's kind of like a door stuck on a rock.

The door image is by Artistic Outpost and is one of the images on the Snowy Woods plate. I watercolored it on watercolor paper using reinkers and a water brush. The door knob is a brad.

Since Cyndi's last post, which was a week ago (we're not very industrious, are we?), I have been getting a lot of flack from my friends about Corky and the dog and the tire swing. Well, I just want to set the record straight that (1) his living in an RV in my sister's backyard is not a permanent arrangement; (2) the dog is well behaved; and (3) the tire swing is a blast.

Shelby and Corky raked all our leaves into a big pile and jump into them from the tire swing. I have no idea why they don't break their necks.

Corky found an old mattress on the side of the interstate and we put that under the leaves. We're not stupid.

There's an old mattress from the interstate in my back yard!!!??? Ewwww!

Until next time,
Cyndi and Shelby

Totally Unreal!

2008-11-14T09:41:00.003-06:00

Tuesday night I came home after a long hard day's work to find a strange man in my house. No surprise there. My sister (a strange woman) lives in my house, so why wouldn't she bring home friends now and again.

The really surprising thing is that I encountered him going from my sister's bathroom into our fenced-in the back yard. That's strange, I thought. It's way too cold for Shelby to be entertaining in the back yard.

A half hour later Bob came home and asked my why there was an RV in the backyard. WHAT? Our back yard is fenced in, and the gates are far too narrow for an RV. "Bob is ten years older than I am," I thought to myself. Was he suffering a stroke? Early-onset Alzheimer's? So I went into the backyard to check it out.

There was an RV in our back yard.

Bob and I knocked on the door of the RV.

Shelby and the strange man from the bathroom (turns out he's Corky, the new 36-year-old bass player in Shelby's band) opened the door and invited us in to share a bottle of wine (probably not their first). "How did you get this in here?" Bob asked very calmly. "Dude, it was not easy. We had to remove part of the fence, drive the RV in, and then put the fence back. Sorry about the tire tracks in your side yard." "You removed the fence!!!???" I asked. "Yeah, but we put it back real good," he explained "because we don't want the dog to get out."

Oh yeah, Corky has a dog.

This is totally unreal. I mean it, it is totally unreal!

Yesterday he hung a tire swing.

Cyndi

Earrings

2008-10-30T13:00:00.003-05:00

Hello, blog readers. Shelby here to show you my new creative outlet. Earrings. Can you believe I just learned how and I made all these earrings?

It's true. I have never seen anyone pick up on how to make earrings faster. She was a total whiz!

Hundreds of pairs of earrings I made all in one evening!

Actually it was 20-something pair, but still very good. And I can't get over your craftsmanship. I've been making earrings for several years, and yours look as good as mine, sis!

And it's all for charity, too.

As hard as it is to believe, she did make all these earrings for charity. I bead for a group called Maanza a Leza that supports a village in Zambia. I brought some jewelry home to work on, and Shelby picked right up on the earring part. Now if I could get her to string beads for necklaces.

Boring. Earrings is where it's at. I don't want to be stuck with the tedium of putting very tiny little beads on a wire over and over.

If you would borrow my reading glasses . . .

I don't need reading glasses. I'm much more valuable as an earring specialist.

It's a shame you scanned them all in a jumble. I'm sure people would be able to see your workmanship if they were scanned neatly in pairs or something.

You, Cyndi, are just jealous of my artistic vision.

Until next time,
Cyndi and Shelby

Bandana Technique

2008-10-27T10:08:00.008-05:00

Hey stampers, have you tried the banadana technique? Sponge dye ink where you want it, stamp in black, and highlight with a white gel pen. I had done this technique before, and thought I should try it with a Christmas theme. The birds, snowflakes, and sentiment are by Inkadinkado. The corner motif is by Bo Bunny. (Who knew Bo Bunny made stamps?)

As it was explained to me, this is a "double tag," a popular shape in some circles. I certainly don't understand it--you can't fold it to make it into a card because the back of it is not pretty. In fact there are ink smears all over the back of it. Also, you can't send it in an envelope without folding it because it is fairly large.

Yes, Shelby, but the front of it turned out quite nicely. And it's art. The trim is Dresden foil that I purchased from Rock Candy Studios.

You would not believe the amount of time Cyndi spent on this with that white pen. If anyone gets this as a Christmas card, I can almost guarantee it will be the only one.

Hey, "Dresden Foil" might be a good name for my band. It's got kind of an Old World feel to it. We have been practicing and are now up to six songs that are performance ready. "Dresden Foil"--what do you think?

I think it's better than some of the other names you've come up with which are not appropriate for a family-friendly blog.

Until next time . . .

Cyndi and Shelby

HEY!!!

2008-10-17T10:13:00.002-05:00

I just read her post! First of all, just because I wear skirts a little above the knee does not make me an exhibitionist. Secondly, okay we only know five songs, but we play them for a long time. And lastly, I would welcome any input by way of a name for the band. We're all over 40 (although I'm just barely), but we can still rock. Me and four (really cute) guys.

It has been a long time since I've done anything like this. And even though it was a lunch time gig at a "tire" store, I was really "tired" afterwards. I guess if we get invited to open a muffler store, I'll be totally "exhausted."

Shelby

Tumbled Tiles

2008-10-16T23:13:00.004-05:00

My dear sister Shelby has gone to bed, so I guess I'm on my own with this post.

This coming Saturday my rubber stamp club, Rollin' On The Rubber (no, we don't pass out condoms at local high schools), is hosting the third annual Stamper's Day Out, and I am teaching one of the projects. We are making coasters out of "tumbled tiles."

I think everyone will have fun with this project. Basically you coat your tiles with two colors of alcohol inks and then, when they're dry, you stamp on them using StazOn ink. Then you can either bake them or seal them with spray sealant. I'm going to bake mine.

Now, I will let you in on a little secret. When I stamped the image on the second tile I made (the orange one), the image smeared. I got out my StazOn Cleaner and wiped the whole thing off. No problem. In fact, it left the tile a lighter shade of orange, like you see here, with the natural marbling of the tile showing up beautifully. So I left it light and stamped that. I liked it so well I lightened the blue and the purple tiles the very same way, which really make the stamped "weeds" pop out. The green tile was light enough for my taste, so I didn't lighten it at all.

The wildflower stamps are by Endless Creations, and the bee is from the Stampin' Up! set Serene Sunflower.

The reason Shelby has gone to bed so early tonight is that she was up so late last night. Normally that would not be a problem as she generally sleeps until lunch, but today she had to get up by 8:30. Shelby has formed a band, and they had to be at the opening of a tire store by 11 a.m. to play for the lunch crowd. The gig didn't last very long as they only know four or five songs so far, and they only got paid in the number of hot dogs they could eat (or stuff in Shelby's oversized purse), but they were very excited for the "exposure"--a very applicable word considering the length of Shelby's skirt. I wish them every success as long as they don't practice in my house.

Cyndi

Sunset Serenade

2008-10-11T16:23:00.019-05:00

Y'all are not going to believe this, but Shelby actually played an integral part in making this card! She did all the sewing on the background.

Cyndi could have done the sewing herself, but apparently she doesn't know how to thread her machine.

It's true. I was cursing the stupid sewing machine, when my older sister came to my rescue, threaded my machine properly, and then, while I worked on the foreground, she sewed the scraps of paper (which had their edges already sponged with Always Artichoke ink) to the base of the card front.

I'm your younger sister by 18 months.

As if. So anyway, the main image (a la Zindorf) was created as follows: I took a Post-It note and masked off the top two thirds, then sponged Not Quite Navy ink on the bottom third starting with the outside edges and working my way to the inside, getting lighter and lighter as I went toward the center. Then I used the same Post-It and masked the water. I sponged Summer Sun, More Mustard, and Pumpkin Pie inks, getting very light toward the center so it would look sunsetty.

Very imaginative word there, Sis. And who named these colors? Allie Alliteration?

Then I stamped the grass from Stampin' Up!'s "Inspired by Nature" set and highlighted the grass with a white gel pen. I also used the pen to add a little light to the water. Finally I added photo corners to the matted image to give it more of photo feel. What do you think?

I think you've wasted enough time on this card, and it's time you got some housework done. I'm not cleaning this house by myself again. Your readers would not be impressed if I photographed and posted the living room.

Unfortunately, she's right. We're off to do a few chores. Thanks for reading.

Cyndi and Shelby

Clear Card for Christmas

2008-10-09T14:40:00.000-05:00

I put this card together for shoebox swap at the Memphis Gathering of Splitcoast-stampers which was last weekend. It uses the new-this-year To You and Yours stamp set by Stampin' Up! The really cool thing about this card, which you may not be able to tell from the scan, is that it is a clear card. The light blue panel behind the tag is actually the inside of the card, and the blue tag with the dove on it is glued to the front of the card. The snow on the house and the white swirls on the dove's trail are made with a white Zig marker from their Chalk Collection.

Shelby here. Hi, everyone. I don't stamp, but I can tell you that this actually is one of her better cards that I've seen. The concept is wonderful. What she calls the "card base" is a clear piece of plastic like those clear report covers. And she stamped white swirly things directly onto the clear part and glued the paper parts directly to the plastic parts.

Thanks, Shelby, for helping to explain it. The clear part of the card is "7mm acetate" (which is plastic) and the paper Shelby was referring to is "cardstock." I don't actually "glue" anything together, but I put it all together with dry adhesive.

Potato, potahto.

I should explain a little why Shelby is helping me out today. It appears that Shelby's therapist thinks that she and I could use a little work on our relationship and has suggested that we do a project together. This is it.

Heaven forbid we start something that I'm actually interested in.

So I will keep posting my art.

And I will provide the color commentary.

I'm sure it will prove to be very colorful.

Cyndi & Shelby

Sunflower - Summer's Last Hurrah

2008-10-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

Here is the birthday card I made for my mother. Happy Birthday, Mom! Those of you who know me will be totally impressed in that I actually sewed on this card. That's right--it's not faux stitching on this card, but actual thread from my actual sewing machine. I gave up the TV in my stamp room, and now I have room for my Singer. These stamps are the "Serene Sunflower" set by Stampin' Up! and they are retired. Retired? How can this set be retired? I've barely used it!

For those of you wondering, life with my sister Shelby is actually going pretty well. It turns out she cooks! Now Bob and I have food in the house all the time. Need a snack? There are leftovers in the fridge (and they are not in Styrofoam take-away boxes this time).

Of course none of my pots and pans were up to Shelby's standard. She dug into her bedrooom closet full of boxes and replaced virtually everything in my kitchen with her stuff--even the salt and pepper shakers and cannisters. All by herself she boxed up all my kitchen paraphernalia and moved them to my bedroom. I guess she feels like we're more on an even par, now that my bedroom is hard to move around in as well.

Shelby has also started therapy, which I think will be good for her. The divorce from Art was quite a blow to her psyche. Plus it's probably stressful to her to have to move in with her (much younger-LOL) sister.

Finally, Splitcoaststampers is having a Memphis gathering this Saturday, and I am so excited! I've been making a shoebox swap (i.e. one card 40 times, but I only put one together. The other cards are cut out, but not stamped, and put into individual sandwich bags. Think "snowman soup" or a cake mix). I'll post my card after the event.

Cyndi

P.S. The text is in different colors because I can't get the paragraphing to work. Technology!

Oatmeal and Watercoloring

2008-09-17T12:44:00.001-05:00

With all the drama that's been going on in my house, I had to get back to my peaceful studio.

This card is inspired by yesterday's SplitcoastStampers sketch challenge (my favorite of all the challenges) and a friend's birthday that's coming up next week. I really wanted to try this sketch, but I had choir practice last night, beading group, yada, yada, yada . . . Anyway, I got up this morning an hour early so I could get back into the studio before my sister Shelby woke up and the drama recommenced.

I used Stampin' Up!'s Eastern Influences set for the central image on this card and an old Anna Griffin sentiment that I have had for a long time. I like that it's such a small sentiment, because I don't always save room for a big “Happy Birthday.” The paper is Basic Grey's "Eva" that I got from Jacksonbelle Embellishments.

An important thing to know about this story is that I have also been trying to save enough time in the morning to eat a healthy breakfast, so I had oatmeal cooking real slow on the stove. Oatmeal is fairly low maintenance, and I was pretty sure I could keep an eye on it while watercoloring. Unfortunately watercoloring, for me, is very absorbing--almost spiritual, and . . . yes, I forgot about the oatmeal until I smelled it burning. (Always microwave oatmeal when watercoloring.)

Anyway the smell of burned oatmeal made the kitties crinkle their noses in disgust and woke Shelby, who wandered into my studio to see what I was up to. I didn’t realize she had never watched me make a card before. She shook her head, went back into her bedroom closet (having to crawl over furniture in order to get to it) and dug out a box of store-bought greeting cards. She presented them to me unceremoniously and told me I could help myself anytime I wanted and that she knew where she could get more if we ran out. [Sigh].

Cyndi
(The unappreciated artist)

Shelby is here . . . with her furnishings.

2008-09-17T12:44:00.000-05:00

My sister Shelby has moved into my house. I understood that when you add a new person some disruption to a household occurs, but I had no idea . . .

The good news is that by the time I went over to her now-former house to pick Shelby up, she had the giant Ryder truck loaded and ready to go. Since her ex-husband was paying for the move, she hired the youth group from her church to pack her up and load the truck, and she paid them well for it with the blank check Art (her ex) gave her. I think it boiled down to a ski trip for the entire youth group in January.

It took us what seemed like forever to drive from Roanoke to Memphis with the giant Ryder truck lumbering slowly down the interstate, and me following in the station wagon. Part of what made the journey so slow was the speed at which she was comfortable driving the giant Ryder truck, and part of it was due to the giant bottles of water she would purchase (and subsequently drink) every time we stopped. And we had to stop a lot . . . because of the giant bottles of water. But I shouldn't complain; after all I could have been the one stuck in the truck.

I'm not being judgmental, but one of the reasons Shelby may have had for drinking so much water and having to stop so much may have been the truckers. The reason she had to stop at truck stops was because, she alleges, they have nicer rest rooms. The reason she had to wear indecently short shorts for a woman her age was because truck stops have truckers. Now I would admit that Shelby has nice legs, but apparently she did not want confirmation from me. The friendly trucker drivers told Shelby everything she wanted to know each time she stepped down out of the big Ryder truck and languidly stretched the weariness of the road out of her taught muscles. Divorce is hard on a person, and it doesn't hurt a body to accept a little positive reinforcement now and again.

There was a lot of furniture in that van. And now it's mostly all in one bedroom and a bathroom in my not-so-large house.

You won't believe how she's got that furniture arranged. She's got her queen-size bed pushed into a corner at the far side of the room and has about 14 inches on the right side of the bed to get in and out. She has two large dressers stacked one on top of the other and uses a footstool, a chair, and a "fairly" sturdy table as a ladder to get into the top drawers of the top dresser. Right beside the stack of dressers is a computer desk that also houses her television, her good china, silverware, and stemware. Because it won't fit on the computer desk, the printer is located across the small bedroom on the dining room table; the printer is beautifully flanked on either side with ornate sterling silver candelabra. Thank goodness the closet in that room is large--because four of her six dining room chairs are squeezed in along with a lot of clothing and three big boxes. The other two chairs contribute to the furnishings of the bedroom, one at the computer, and one at the dining room table.

You would think in a room that crowded with furniture, a woman would leave her nick-nacks packed in a box, wouldn't you? But a lot of them are proudly displayed on the several end tables in the room. Others that are not in her bedroom have been placed on the several end tables that now are crowded into the bathroom under a large sofa-sized painting of a serene farmhouse and cows.

Some people don't believe in storage facilities.

Cyndi

Ryder Truck!!!

2008-09-10T15:51:00.000-05:00

Y'all are not going to believe this. I rented a station wagon to come here to Virginia to pick up my sister and make sure that we could get all her clothes, along with the personalty she needed, to make a new life for herself in Memphis. Apparently Shelby thought she needed more personalty than she told me about on the front end. She has rented a Ryder truck--not the smallest one either.

"Where in my house are you planning to put everything?" I was trying to stay calm. Trying to be reasonable. Wondering how I was going to explain this to Bob who was already having to get used to the idea of having his quiet home invaded. "I'll make it fit. Don't worry." I can't help it; I'm worried.

Meanwhile, my mom and I are having a great visit. Her new condominium is just lovely! The photo is some art from her apartment. Isn't that cool! I'm going to use it as an inspiration piece when I get home.

Speaking of inspirational, you just don't know how I've missed the mountains of Virginia. After I break it to Bob about his sister-in-law's big furniture move in, I will tell him my great idea about retiring to Floyd, Virginia (still dreaming-distance into the future). He'll probably be ready to retire as soon as he sees that Ryder truck.

Cyndi

Pretty Paper

2008-09-05T07:34:00.000-05:00

Thursday's Splitcoaststampers Ways to Use It challenge is to use some of your specialty paper. I bought the paper for this card from my local scrapbook store, Eclectica, a couple of weeks ago. It's so yummy I almost had it for lunch that day, but I'm glad I saved it.

Usually the cards I make are 4-1/4" X 5-1/2" (commonly referred to as A2), but this one is 5" X 7" because I didn't want to cut this paper up too much. I used some more faux stitching (is the border stitch called a couching stitch?--I don't remember) and made some more of those cute butterflies. The sentiment in the middle of the diamond is from the Verve set Beautiful You and says "No winter lasts forever. No spring skips its turn. --Hal Borland." The buttons are from a giant stash of buttons that I have, but I never use.

This is my last post before I leave on my week-long trip to see my mother and to pick up my sister. I am so excited that I have actually packed my suitcase a whole day before I leave! My clothes are usually pulled warm from the dryer a half hour before we leave.

Funny story: My grandmother used to pack so far ahead of time that she would have nothing to wear. She would pull things out of the suitcase, wear them, wash them, and repack them . . . for several weeks.

Cyndi

Paper Engineered Butterfly Wings

2008-09-04T08:36:00.000-05:00

Wednesdays may be the best day of the week on Splitcoaststampers.com. Not only do they post a new tutorial of a project or a technique, but Wednesday is sketch challenge day. And here is my card based on this week's Sketch Challenge.

First of all, let's talk about the faux stitching. For those of you not acquainted with this technique, the artist pokes a line of holes in the paper with a paper piercer (or a pin or a needle or beading awl or whatever sharp implement you may have in your stamping space) and then draws between the holes with a pen. Here I used a Signo white gel pen, which is ideal, but if you want your "thread" to be another color, use that instead. Now some stampers use a piercing template or a ruler to be sure that their "stitching line" is absolutely straight. Me, I just punch the holes in a relatively straight line. I mean, if I were to either hand sew or machine stitch on a card, I'm not kidding myself that my stitches would be any straighter than this. I'm just not that good of a seamstress.

Please note that the above card shows examples of "faux machine stitching," both in the straight stitching around my focal image and the zigzag stitch on the red stripe at the bottom. Why is faux machine stitching any different than regular faux stitching? you may ask. It's because I intentionally added an additional layer of faux stitching (bottom left-hand corner) to resemble what happens when you run the machine forward and backward at the end (or the beginning) of a line of stitching to lock the stitch. Just another whimsical detail I thought would be funny.

But I digress. This card was actually pretty easy to make. The main image and the butterflies stared out as Barely Banana paper, and I sponged them with Summer Sun and Ruby Red inks. I used the Upsy Daisy stamp set from Stampin' Up! for the flowers and the salutation. The butterflies are punched with a Martha Stewart punch (the only Martha Stewart item in my entire house--it's actually a great punch, very easy to use).

Now for the paper engineering. I am often frustrated when I punch or cut out a butterfly, carefully glue just the body of the creature to my card so that the wings can flap freely, and then put in in an envelope where the Postal Service runs it through their machines and the card gets to the recipient with the wings crushed flat against the card. Now, I could either write something inside the card such as, "I hope you have the Happiest Birthday ever. Please pop up the wings of the butterfly so that they are as pretty as before they were mailed," or I could try something else. This time I tried something else.

Under each butterfly wing there is a strip of paper that measures approximately 3/8" x 1/16". Not only is it an extremely tiny piece of paper, but it is folded in half (making it even tinier) so that it can act as a springy hinge between the wing and the card base. Just a drop of glue on each side of the tiny hinge works like a charm.

How many times did I drop those stupid scraps of hinged paper? I lost count. Then I remembered that I had a pair of tweezers from Making Memories that I probably had never used. It came in a kit with the paper piercer from the second paragraph. WOW! That is a truly indispensable tool when it comes to working with paper that measures 3/8" x 1/16". It gripped the tiny paper effortlessly. I will have to remember that tool is in my arsenal.

On a final note, I wanted my butterfly wings to have just a touch of sparkle, so I painted them with SoSoft Fabric Paint by DecoArt.

It sounds like it was a very involved card, but it actually came together pretty quickly. I still had time to finish de-cluttering, and we now have room to squeeze my sister Shelby into the house when I bring her back from Virginia on the 14th. Although I was kind of dreading adding a person (and a fairly . . . uh . . . dramatic one) to our quiet home, I am really looking forward to spending time with Shelby. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Until next post,
Cyndi

Snowy Owl

2008-09-03T09:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on Splitcoaststampers.com the color challenge was . . . any color you like -- as long as your card was monochromatic. As luck would have it, I just received Inkadinkado's Winter Birds from Jacksonbelle Embellishments, saw the image of the owl, and knew immediately that blue was going to be my color of the day

So after I had finished the evening's de-cluttering project (yes, there's more to go, but one must have art in one's life), I commenced with the stamping.

Starting with the small panel, I stamped the owl image with Night of Navy ink on glossy cardstock, set the ink with a heat gun, then colored in both the owl and the blue circle behind his head with a VersaMarker and embossed with clear embossing powder. Next I took my trusty rubber brayer, loaded it with the ink from a Baja Breeze ink pad and brayered the top and the bottom until there was just paleness in the middle. (The intent was to leave more white, but the brayering got away from me.) I used Pacific Point and again brayered the top and the bottom leaving even more in the middle. Finally I added some Night of Navy ink just to the top and the lower left-hand corner. Then I wiped the ink off the previously embossed owl and . . . wow! It looked so good except for the lower right-hand corner which somehow had a dot of white that the ink wouldn't stick to. No problem. That's why God gave us snowflake brads.

For the background piece, I stamped the "birds leaving a trail of Christmas cheer behind them" (hereafter known as "BLTCCBT") stamp in Night of Navy. Then I stamped the snowflakes from another clear stamp set (I think it's Inkadinkado, but I won't swear to it) using only VersaMark, and embossed them with the clear embossing powder. I used my brayer in the same way noted above and wiped the ink away from the flakes. Cool!

I originally matted the little owl with one navy piece 1/8 inch wider on all sides that my owl image. But while waiting for Bob to get off the computer last night so I could scan the card, I looked at it from across the room and I realized the owl should have a thicker mat. So I double matted with the same cardstock. I kind of like the double-mat look.

Special thanks go out to Michelle Zindorf for her work in raising the stamping bar, and then giving us all step-by-step instructions so we can use the "Zindorf Technique" as well. If you don't stalk her blog, you are missing something.

I'm a Black Magic Woman

2008-09-02T09:56:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's Technique Lovers' Challenge at Splitcoaststampers.com was the "Black Magic" technique. Where the "magic pencil" technique uses Prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits (I use Gamsol), the "Black Magic" technique uses them on black cardstock. Additionally, I usually use the Gamsol on a tortillon, which is a paper stub used for blending, but Lynn (the technique lovers moderator) told us we could dip our pencils directly into the Gamsol to soften the pencil lead. Sweet!

Basically with this technique, you take dark cardstock and stamp your open or line image in white or off-white ink, let the ink dry, then color it with the pencils dipped in the mineral spirits. The first time I tried this, however, I decided to emboss and image in white and then color it. Well, that didn't work out too well for me, so I went back and followed the actual directions. It worked like a charm!

I used my new Stampin' Up! Bella Toile stamp as a background, and it was so fabulous, I didn't want to cover up very much of it (I spent a lot of time coloring this), so I added a tiny little labeled sentiment and some very sheer ribbon.

Tonight, I will start cleaning up my studio, and my husband will start cleaning out his back bedroom/storeroom to make room for my sister Shelby who will be moving in with us in a few weeks. I am not really sure at this point where she will be sleeping, but we are going to have to do some major decluttering. As horrible as it sounds, I hope Shelby's husband will be retaining most of their possessions, because I don't know where she would to put them in my house.

Wish us all luck!

Stamping at Studio Suzanne

2008-09-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

People have been telling me I need to blog. I don't know that this is true, and I doubt that I have anything interesting that others would like to know about. But it's free, so here goes.

Last Thursday I had a play date at Studio Suzanne, the home of Oxford Impressions rubber stamps. You'd like Suzanne. She's really nice and she has very cool art stuff in her house and in her studio. In fact, she has a blog: blog.oxfordimpressions.com; you should check her out.

After eating really good chicken salad and looking at everything in her studio, we settled in to stamp. I started out by choosing stamps from her Country Girl plate and paper I thought would look good with it. The image of the little girl is a photo stamp, which gives a very realistic impression. For best results you stamp with a not-too-wet/not-too-dry black ink pad onto not-too-matte/not-too-glossy coated cardstock. Luckily, I was at Studio Suzanne, and she had just the tools we needed to make this art project work.

Usually I take a few passes at photo image stamps before I get a good impression, but the little girl stamped great the first time . . . except for her feet. Tragically, I amputated her feet, but I hated to waste the impression so I went with it. This actually provided me a great opportunity for design. One of the pieces of background paper I was using had all these great flowers and leaves in it, which I then started cutting out. Not only did I cover up her feet, but I got a great corner for the picture of the house and even put a leftover leaf in the bottom left corner. (Leaves are hard to contain in the fall.)

Suzanne showed me how to paint (yes, actual paint) the edges with black and brown to look like burned edges. You paint and then you smear with your fingers. I realize I may need to practice this technique a little bit. It doesn't really look burned, but it does look edged, old, and definitely distressed.

When I got home I wasn't perfectly happy with black and white stamped images, so I colored my little girl and my house with markers. I also added the bottom trim and a coordinating ribbon at the top, so I can hang it in my studio, where it will look fabulous and remind me of a fun night spent with my friend Suzanne.

Hey! I just finished my first blog post! The pressure's off. Whew!