An Unconventional Valentine

At long last, here is that Valentine I promised everyone ages ago!

I decided to be unconventional this year, so I ditched the traditional red and pink colors. I have a pack of beautiful card stock by Martha Stewart called the 'essentials paper pad'; 42 sheets of spectacular pale blues and greens, accented with loads of white lacy patterns and hearts, and even some super shiny paper too. I look through this pack of papers and just drool!

 

I kept the design relatively simple because the papers are just sooooo pretty. First I punched the lacy edge of the paper, and then folded the card stock in half. I wanted to make sure that the lacy edge exactly met that back edge. So you cut first and fold second. The three hearts I cut out from a page so I could use them down the middle, vertically, overlapping, instead of the way they were printed, which was horizontally and not touching. Wrong direction! I then added a couple bows and put those sparkle dots in the middle just for a bit of added glitz. And we all know how much I love to use a bit of bling! Next came the birds, out of a shiny green paper, just for a bit more pizazz.

 

 

For the inside, I kept the heart theme going and used the same lacy background paper as well. And I added another bow with a sparkly dot being flown up into place by two more birds. The sentiment is simple, on purpose. "I love you!" really seemed to be enough. The overlapping heart stickers are beautifully embossed, and probably from the wedding section, if I recall correctly.

 

Unfortunately, my Mom never got to see this card. She passed away shortly before Valentine's Day. This is the hardest blog post I've ever had to do. Mom was a card crafter decades before it was even popular. And it is so hard to think that my days of crafting something beautiful for her are gone. Fortunately, I am surrounded by her beautiful artwork all over my house. And she will be close to me in my heart always....



Birthday Card for Mom

My mom was 94 years old in late 2012. And her birthday always means a very special art card from me. Now my Mom is a very talented, creative, artistic person in her own right, and she was making handcrafted cards decades before it was even popular! And it is sharing our artistic talents that has made us so very close over my adult years.

My Mom loves muted colors, and I was in a mood to play with my new fern template from Paperwishes.  And then I just started rooting through nearly everything I have in my cardmaking arsenal. I can sit and look at papers and consider various combinations for hours and days! The paper I used for the ferns is actually a piece of cold-pressed water color paper. I wanted lots of texture. Then I started the inking process. First I did the the entire piece of paper in a pale, pale yellow-green. Then the ferns, beginning with the lightest greens, and gradually getting darker, until I got the look I wanted. And if I remember correctly, I used my Spectrum Noir pens to give them a soft look. If you've never played around with these alcohol pens, you should give them a try! The way the colors blend is almost magical.

Tearing this watercolor paper gives a nice aged-looking edge. To get this look, I tore the excess paper toward me, so a bit of the topmost layers were torn away with the excess. If you tear your paper the other way, you get a completely different look. Try it!

Then I just started layering papers and adding embellishments. The tag on the left, above, was made using the Layered Labels template by Hot Off The Press (available at Paperwishes). And I'm really loving this template, and using the heck out of it! This template has 9 different styles of labels. All you have to do is pick your style, pick your papers, trace and cut. Add some embellishments, and voila!  

 

And as my Mom would say, "There you have it."

 

Next week I will post the Valentine's Day card I just finshed for Mom. It's just a wee.... bit different than most Valentine's Day cards.

 

Happy crafting!

The Making of an Art Card - Part 3

There came a day when I just knew that the captain of my Etsy team, 'It's A Madcap Life', needed a little surprise lift via the postal elephant, as I like to call our US Postal Service. So I set my creative wheels in motion to make her an art card. And it wasn't long before I had a plan...

But first, a little background. A'esha, our beloved captain, has an Etsy shop (duh!) called The Madcap Heiress, where she sells jewelry inspired by iconic beautiful women, and fashion look books. She is a tour de force when it comes to dressing women fashionably. And when I have a fashion question, I throw it over to her.

So... my plan was to turn the card into a little shop called the Madcap Heiress.

 

 

Now obviously, the front of the card needed to be the outside of the shop.  So I dug through my templates until I found a template called Basic Wallpaper from www.fairytalecreations.com, that I use to create brick exteriors. And with a variety of brownish chalks and cotton balls, I chalked in the brick on the front of the card. Then, using their Chalk Talk 2 template, I created the front door, on a separate piece of cardstock, with yellow chalks. A sparkly dot for a door knob, a rose sticker above the door window and an open sign completed the front door.

 

Then it was on to the sign. For this I dug out a fabulous tag template called 15 Lovely Labels from Hot Off The Press, available at www.paperwishes.com . I love this template! I use it all the time to make wonderful layered tags and labels. And voila! A sign for the shop.

 

Then the inside. I knew I had these little paper packs of embellishments called Pretty by Artsy Collage. And I've looked at them enough over the years that I also knew that they had exactly the items I was looking for to put in this shop, beautiful Victorian era fashion items. So I carefully cut them all out.

 

 

 

Every single item inside the shop came from that pack, even the beautiful quote, and the decorative umbrella left by a customer outside the shop. I did add some aluminum foil to the picture frame to change it into a mirror. I even had the cork paper for the walls behind the shelves! And by angling the shelves, instead of cutting them in a rectanglular shape, the perspective is much better and looks much more realistic.

 

 

I must admit, I think this was the easiest and quickest art card I've ever made!  

 

 

 

 

Detour!

I had planned something altogether different for this post, and then my hubby cooked dinner and changed all my plans...

So it's fall. The weather here has gone from 90 on Monday, which is 15 degrees above average, to 65 today, Friday, which is 10 degrees below average. These huge temperature swings really muck with my equanimity. Ya know!  Not to mention I have to dig through closets for warm clothes, when I was wearing tank tops and shorts a couple days ago! But I digress. Oops...

We have a neighbor with a Japanese pear-apple tree. And each year at this time, we are fortunate enough to get some of the fruit from their tree. And tonight my hubby came up with an Asian-inspired rendition of the traditional American sauteed apples sidedish.  And it was really good! 

 

So you slice up some Asian pear-apples, just like apples for a pie or tart. Then you toss them into a saute pan with some Ponzu Citrus Seasoning Sauce, Mirin Sweet Cooking Seasoning(sweet seasoned rice wine) and a bit of sugar. Let it all simmer for a bit and serve while the fruit is still crispy tender.  And that's it folks!

Serve with a stir fry and rice, as a slightly sweet fall sidedish, borrowed from the west. And there you go. East meets west, just like my marriage!

But wait, I have an idea! Thicken the sauce with arrowroot. Toss it with the sliced pear apples to mix well, and then into a partially pre-baked buttery pie crust and bake for a bit...

The Making of a Doll Bed

OK, so is this doll bed cute or what? It was a special birthday present for a special little girl's 5th birthday recently. We made it from a little 'Cuties orange' box, paint stirrer sticks, and leftover fabric. The only thing I bought was some acrylic paint in lavender, pink, and white. And I still have a ton of leftover paint!  Now I wish I could take credit for this idea, but alas, the idea came from a Martha Stewart show.  I'll post a link at the bottom of this article.

So the first thing I did was score a Cuties orange box from my bff who was on the lookout for one for me. She darn near tackled a produce guy for it! Then I had my hubby get me some paint stirrer sticks, which you can get for free from paint departments in those monster-sized home improvement stores. And then I had my hubby prime the box and paint stirrer sticks.

So far this project is working out ok for me, huh? I then glued a couple paint stirrer sticks to the primed base at the head and foot of the bed, using wood glue. This provides a good stable base for gluing the headboard and footboard to the bed.  And since this part of the bed will never show, you don't have to worry about color here.

The only thing I would have done differently is to prime the bed frame white, since we ended up painting the it white in the end.  Covering the gray primer took a few coats of acrylic paint! Oh, and I'd probably try using spray paint next time too. It would go much quicker I think.

And while I was coating these puppies with white paint, and waiting for the paint to dry, I started on a simple reversible quilt with matching pillow, and a dust ruffle. The girl's favorite colors are pink and purple, so pink and purple it was!

Now, since I had two different sizes of paint stirrer sticks, I chose to place the large ones in the four corners, and have them raised up high enough to make a canopy (And fyi, Martha didn't have a canopy!) for this deluxe doll bed. I chose to skip the whole mattress part, but Martha did make a nice covered mattress in her version. And all of the bedding is washable. You just pull it off the bed and throw it into the machine!

Then the little girl's mom thought some stencils in pink and purple would be really cute on the headboard and footboard. So I dug out my stencils for her, we taped the headboard and footboard together with painter's tape, I poured us each a glass of wine, and I said, "Go for it!" And she did. And it was very cute!  Don't ya think?

 

 

Then we glued the headboard and footboard to the base of the bed with a lot of wood glue. I even put a heavy book on there while it was drying, just to make sure it never comes apart.

 

 

 

Then all I had to do was create a canopy that matched the dust ruffle. I narrow hemmed a rectangle, added eyelet trim to the edges, and ribbon ties at the corners to attach it to the bed posts.

 

 

And there you have it. A really cute doll bed which actually just barely fits a Barbie. And it really was a fun project to do with a friend, for her daughter's 5th birthday.

 

 

 

http://www.marthastewart.com/892402/doll-bed



Belated Birthday

While enjoying a glass of wine (or two!) with a friend one afternoon, she exclaimed, "Oh shit! I forgot my mother's birthday yesterday... Do you mind if I give her a quick call?" I of course said I didn't mind at all.  And when she was done, I offered to make her a special Belated Birthday card, for a price!  And she took me up on it, so here is what I did.

First, I decided to make a tri-fold card this time. I haven't done one in a while, and I would just hate to be stuck in a creative rut!  To do this, I used this nifty template gizmo called a Top Score  multiboard by Crafter's Companion. This scoring board can be used to make all kinds of creative card shapes, and it comes with really good instructions too.  I bought mine online at Paper Wishes. Oh surprise!

I knew I was after a card in reds, because I asked my friend what her mother's favorite color is. She actually had to call her! So I started digging through my extraordinarily organized stash of papers (We have a small house and I have a large stash!), and I honed in on this stripey rose pattern and a solid red to match.

Then I followed the directions on the Top Score to create the shell of the card from a heavy white card stock. Next, red paper went on the front side.  On the back side in the middle, I cut out a piece of the stripey rose pattern for the top, because it shows, so I want that to be pretty too. But I don't want it all matchey matchey, if you know what I mean. And for underneath that I found a pretty little sticker of a perfume bottle in pink to pop onto the bottom.

Then it was on to the inside. First, a couple more cutouts from that stripey rose pattern. Then I picked out the sentiment, which we didn't want all gushy, so I kept it very basic. In cases like this, I really want the rest of the card to be very creative and artistic. In fact, I prefer it that way. It's just my style and personality. I like to express myself with my time and my artwork. And each artcard is unique, created especially for that particular person.

Various stickers and some border punching around the sentiment completed the card. And then, since I knew it wouldn't be mailed, I took a sheet of the stripey rose paper and made an envelope. I used another neat gizmo called The Enveloper, also by Crafter's Companion, and also available online at Paper Wishes.

And there you have it, another artcard. Next time I'm going to change direction. It's not going to be an artcard!

Newf puppy pics!